


The Darkness Within

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), The Tournament (2009)
Genre: A Monthly Rumbelling, F/M, Paranormal Phenomena, Possession, Slow Burn, Supernatural - Freeform, psychic phenomena
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-04 18:05:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 52
Words: 120,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11560527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: When washed-up paranormal investigator Rum Gold meets Belle French, he does not quite know what to make of her claim of a supernatural presence in her life, but sensing her genuine fear, he begins to investigate. What he uncovers shakes the cynicism he has so long held to its very core, and he calls in the help of disgraced ex-priest Father Macavoy to help him lay some demons to rest...A slow burn, eventual rumbellavoy. More tags will be added as the story progresses and the rating may increase.Written for the Monthly Rumbelling prompt: “The only good part about being alone is that I don’t wake anyone up when I start screaming at night.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this is very different to the kind of thing I usually write, but the idea would not leave me alone, so here goes!

**The Darkness Within**

**One**

“The only good thing about being alone is that I don’t wake anyone up when I start screaming at night.”

The frank statement, coming as it did completely out of the left field, caught Gold’s ears and made him turn to see who had spoken. There was only one candidate, really. The bar was practically empty like it always was, just a few of the die-hard regulars in one corner drowning their sorrows. Gold supposed that to the outside observer, he, although alone at the bar, would probably be counted among their number: steeped in whiskey, the hardships and trials of their lives lulling them into a sullen silence that still managed speak reams about the past.

The person who had spoken was a young woman. Gold had never seen her before in the bar, and his first instinct was to think how out of place she was. _The Spinning Wheel_ was out of the way, off the beaten track, and one had to know where one was going to find it. Perhaps she was lost, but the tumbler of whiskey on the counter in front of her and the resigned expression in her eyes gave Gold the impression that she was exactly where she wanted to be.

She took a sip of the whiskey, and Gold tried to figure out why she had spoken, to whom, and what the meaning of her words was. She caught him looking then, and gave a world-weary smile that did not quite reach her eyes.

“Don’t worry, I don’t normally make a habit of talking to myself,” she said. “I didn’t realise you’d heard.”

Gold just shrugged and went back to his own whiskey, but he couldn’t help his attention wandering back to the woman every now and then. The regulars in the corner had pulled themselves out of their stupor long enough to realise that something was new, but they were not interested in this stranger enough to pay all that much attention, merely commenting on her presence and returning to their drinks.

There were dark circles of tiredness under her eyes, and Gold presumed that must have to do with the screaming in the night. He wondered what she must have suffered to cause such violent terrors, and why she was drinking to forget them. She drained the tumbler and ordered another; the barkeep didn’t bat an eyelid and simply refilled her glass without a word. She looked up at Gold again.

“What about you?” she asked. “Do you enjoy being alone?”

It was an interesting question and not one that Gold had really ever considered before. He enjoyed peace and quiet and solitude, certainly, but he had been alone for so long that he had forgotten what having other people in his life was like. Enjoyment of the situation didn’t really come into the mix when he had no choice in the matter. His isolation was self-imposed, certainly, a kind of penance for the life he had led thus far. A search for meaning that was so far proving fruitless.

“Not sure,” he said. “I suppose it depends on what it is that is keeping you alone.”

The woman gave a snort, and in that single moment Gold could tell that the story of what was keeping her alone would be a long and complicated one. When she looked back at him, her brow was furrowed, expression thoughtful.

“Have we met before?” she asked.

Gold shook his head. “No, I think I would remember.”

“Memory’s one thing I can’t always rely on,” the woman said. “My name’s Belle. Belle French.”

She reached out a hand along the bar, and Gold shook it tentatively.

“I’m sorry, Miss French, but I don’t believe that we’ve ever met before. Rum Gold.”

Her face changed, from slight confusion to instant recognition and with it, wariness. Inwardly Gold sighed. She knew who he was. He’d hoped that she was young enough not to have been around when he had been at the height of his fame, but apparently not.

“I know you,” she said. “That paranormal guy from the TV.”

Gold nodded. At least ‘that paranormal guy from the TV’ was among the milder epithets that had been used against him over the years.

“I’ve got your book,” Belle continued.

“Oh?” The book had not sold all that well and was no longer in print; Gold was surprised that she’d come across it.

“Yeah. It was interesting.” The sentence sounded unfinished, hanging in the air between them.

“I sense a but,” Gold said. “Interesting but…”

“Ultimately unhelpful,” Belle finished.

“Unhelpful?” His work had been called many things before, but unhelpful was a new one.

“Yes. I think I’d best be going.”

She drained her drink and grabbed her purse from the bar stool next to her, withdrawing enough cash to cover her bill and tip and slipping off. Gold knew that it was clutching at straws, but his conversation with her had led to more questions than answers, and once Gold had grabbed onto the tail of a mystery, he was not one to ever let go.

“Wait, Miss French…”

She turned back to him expectantly, but there was still that guardedness in her face, mental walls being erected and strengthened.

“How was it unhelpful?”

“I would have thought that was fairly obvious, Mr Gold. It didn’t help me.”

“All right…” Gold paused. “What was it that you needed help with?”

Belle scoffed, and the sound was harsh and cruel, at odd with her soft voice and demeanour.

“Mr Gold, you of all people know what industry you made your name in, and you of all people should know that if I told you my trouble, you wouldn’t believe me.”

She left the bar then; the barkeep looked up from cleaning glasses but said nothing and the regulars in the corner did not notice her absence, and Gold was left alone with even more loose ends than he’d started with. Belle was an enigma and he knew next to nothing about her, but he knew enough to want to find out more. She was alone, she had a tendency towards nocturnal screaming, and she had acquired his book in the hope of assistance which had not been forthcoming.

If she’d been looking to him for assistance with whatever it was that ailed her, then she really must be desperate.

He paid his tab and left the bar, walking home in the muggy July evening heat. The town wasn’t perhaps the most comfortable place that he could have settled, but it was nice and secluded, and that was what he had wanted, jaded and tired of life as he was.

Once inside his house (rumoured by the locals to be haunted by the ghost of a restless suicide from 1832, rumours so far unproven), Gold made his way to his study, taking down the single copy of his book that he still possessed and looking at the title page.

_The Inexplicable Explained – Debunking Paranormal Phenomena and Urban Legends_

He’d once been described as the nation’s favourite cynic, but it had not always been the case. When Rum Gold had been a child, he had been convinced of the existence of ghosts. Every night for the majority of his formative years, he had felt the presence hovering around outside his window, and on the few occasions he had been brave enough to investigate, he had seen it, the shadow that had followed him around. Just an ordinary human shadow, but without a body attached to it.

The eyes had been the worst thing. They were what had sent him racing back into his bed and pulling the covers up over his head, shivering with fear beneath them and praying that the window would hold, that tonight would not be the night that his aunts’ spells failed. The aunts who had raised him were Wiccans, and every night at sundown they had cast a circle of protection over the house to prevent anything malevolent from harming those within. Every time that Gold had seen those unblinking yellow eyes in the darkness, he had thanked whatever force it was that was protecting him from them.

Gold grew up believing in the power of Wicca, a staunch believer in the paranormal, and when he had become an adult, he had devoted his research to such phenomena, investigating claims.

But life and experiences had made Gold into the cynic he was now renowned for being. After his aunts had passed away, he’d had no more link to the Wiccan community and had fallen out of touch with what had been such an everyday part of his upbringing. And so much of what he had investigated during the course of his career had been fake, hoaxes designed for quick cash grabs. In the end, he had turned his career on its head, becoming the famed debunker of paranormal phenomena that he had made his fortune being. Despite the wonder that he had once held for them, each instance that crossed his path was now met with scepticism and the firm belief that whoever was reporting these claims was only in it for the money and the media attention. He’d come to verbal blows with scam artists enough times that he had gained notoriety, and after that, he had retreated into the obscurity he now welcomed.

He put the book back on the shelf and thought back to Belle’s words. She had sought help from his book and it had failed her, but she had said that he would not believe her problem. Some kind of paranormal experience that she could not explain, and that she had looked to his book to try and find a logical, real world reason for.

And he had failed her.

As the light continued to fade around him, Gold wondered. Over the years he had long since let go of his belief in ghosts, figuring that the eyes he had seen in the darkness were fireflies, a trick of the light, nothing harmless at all. But at the time, he had believed, and he had been extremely scared.

Belle had encountered something similar, it would seem. Something that had scared her and that she was desperate to have explained away. It would seem, then, that perhaps she was not the usual kind of quack he had spent his career exposing.

He grabbed the phone directory off the shelf and scanned through it for a B. French, but there was nothing. Perhaps Belle wasn’t her full name – maybe Isabelle, Annabelle, but I. French and A. French were also unsuccessful. It was a long-shot to think that she had lived here any length of time; it was a small town and he’d have run into her before no doubt. Perhaps she was just passing through, searching for answers to her predicament elsewhere.

The words that she had first spoken were etched in his mind, and they had not even been intended for his hearing.

_The only good thing about being alone is that I don’t wake anyone up when I start screaming at night._

Here was a terrified young woman seeking help, and for the first time in a long time, Gold felt something, a need for action stirring him out of his apathy. Maybe there was a perfectly logical explanation for her trouble, but if that was what it took to help her, then so be it.

All he had to do now was track her down, and with a sigh Gold realised that was probably going to be a dead end. Still, if their paths every crossed again then he would make sure to listen to her and reassure her that he would not dismiss her concerns out of hand. He might not believe whatever supernatural thing she needed his help with, but he could believe that she genuinely believed, and that was enough for him.

He got up out of his chair, night having well and truly fallen in the interim, and he went to leave the study. As he did so, he felt the prickling feeling of the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. It was a feeling that he had not experienced in many a year, and he could feel the fear coating the back of his throat. Something was watching him.

He didn’t want to turn around, didn’t want to confront whatever it was behind him, but at the same time, he knew that if he didn’t then the feeling of being watched would continue to haunt him. All of a sudden he was seven years old again and there were very real shadows outside his window, begging to be let in to perform nefarious deeds unknown.

Gold took a deep breath and turned.

There was nothing to see, just his own reflection in the window, and he inwardly kicked himself for being so silly. He crossed the room with purpose, grabbing the curtains and pulling them closed. As he did so, something caught his eye in the overgrown yard beyond. Just the briefest flash of movement, a stray cat or some kind of wild animal. Maybe a raccoon. There was absolutely no need to panic.

Nonetheless, Gold still found himself dusting off his aunts’ old journals and murmuring the words of the circle of light to himself.


	2. Chapter 2

**Two**

Gold woke with a feeling of unease and the sense that his sleep had not been at all restful. For some reason, the feeling of being watched that he had experienced the previous evening was still haunting him, even though he knew that there had been nothing out of the ordinary in the garden. Somewhere in his subconscious, the scared little boy that most definitely believed in ghosts was begging to be let out and have his voice heard and his fears taken seriously. Gold tried to squash him down. There was nothing out of the ordinary in the house, he was safe here. His gaze caught the old leather-bound journal on his nightstand, worn from use and years of care and love. His aunts had protected him again, it seemed. He shook his head; he was being silly. There was no such thing as the supernatural and the words on the pages in the journal were just that, words. Words had power, certainly, and they had definitely made him feel better the previous evening, but ultimately there was no magic in them. At least, that was what Gold was trying to tell himself. The feeling of unease was refusing to die as he went about his morning routine, and for a long time, Gold found himself nostalgic for the hustle and bustle of the city where he had spent most of his adult life. At least in New York, the noise of the city going about its daily business drowned out all the strange sounds that might have come to his attention. The quiet here in the countryside that he had originally sought out now seemed oppressive, as if it had a life of its own, and he found himself listening for the slightest thing that might be out of the ordinary.

He shook himself crossly and spat toothpaste into the sink with unnecessary violence. There was nothing out there and the quiet was supposed to be restful, not stressing him out even more than he had been in New York. He had come out here for a time of reflection and solitude and he was never going to get anywhere if that very reflection and solitude was having the opposite effect.

His mind wandered back to his encounter with Belle the previous evening, and he wondered if the mystery that surrounded her had somehow rubbed off on him on a subconscious level and he was seeing spectres where there shouldn't be any simply because of her story. An incomplete story. Well, if he was being honest then it was barely a story at all, more the promise of a story that he desperately wanted to hear. But why should that be causing these long-suppressed feelings of fear to resurface after all this time? He'd already convinced himself that whatever it was that was troubling her had a perfectly logical real world explanation, she just didn't know what it was, and since he had no idea what her ailment was, he didn't either. Nothing was completely inexplicable. He'd been on TV enough times proving that, and getting into a lot of trouble with devout religious believers of all faiths when he set about proving that their miracles were not, in fact, anything of the sort.

Gold found himself going back into his study with his breakfast, drawn to stand at the window with his morning tea and stare out into the sunshine. There was nothing to see, just as there had been nothing to see in the darkness, no eyes lurking in the shade of the overgrown bushes, no rustling movements, no...

Gold almost dropped his tea in shock as he took a step back from the window, moving a little to view the glass from a slightly different angle. There was a handprint on the outside of the glass, the early morning sun showing the smear clearly now. A single right hand print, that Gold knew he had not made himself. He rarely went into the backyard as it was, and he'd never had reason to put his hands on the windows. True, he walked with a cane and was prone to lose his balance and grab out for the nearest stable thing to hold him up, but this was definitely a right hand print and definitely on the outside of the glass, and he held his cane in his right hand. He looked down at the stick, leaning innocently against the windowframe, and glared at it.

The print was definitely new. He spent enough time in the study to have noticed it if it had been there before. Gold sat down heavily in his plush leather office chair, turning it this way and that as he continued to contemplate the hand print. On the face of it, there was really nothing to worry about. It was a human hand, not any kind of strange creature that didn't exist. Whilst strangers in his backyard was definitely cause for concern, it wasn't anything wholly strange. A homeless person looking for shelter perhaps. Nothing malevolent. It was only the continued feeling of unease that he still couldn't shake from last night that was making him so wary. If it hadn't been for his odd little encounter with Belle then he wouldn't be overthinking this new evidence.

But the fact remained that he had had an odd little encounter with Belle and he was wary. Tea drunk, he left the house, moving around to the backyard and inspecting the handprint. It was just a handprint, and he found himself giving a dry laugh. Perhaps if it had been a handprint smeared with blood then there would be more reason to fret but even then... just an injured person looking for assistance and coming to the first house they found.

Actually, the fact that this smudge was made with just human skin and nothing more shocking unnerved him more than blood would have done. A bloody handprint would be attached to a bloody person and he would no doubt have heard cries for help or something akin. Just an ordinary person pressing their hand against his window was a strange behaviour indeed. He inspected the print again. His time as an investigator had made him aware and observant. One of his frequent contacts had often joked that he would have been a detective in another life, and the skills had never really left him despite not being used properly in such a long while; it wasn't really something that he could switch off. The print was deliberate, not smeared like prints so often were. Someone had pressed their hand up against the window with intent. But intent to do what? The curtains had been closed all night and the lights off, there was no reason for it that Gold could see. A quick check of the other back windows yielded nothing; they were as clean as they normally would be.

Nervousness was giving way to intrigue, and Gold retrieved some tape from his study, carefully pulling the fingerprints from the print before cleaning it off the glass. Out of sight, out of mind. He might have been able to forget about it completely had it not been for his increasingly frantic desire to work out who the owner of the hand was. It was definitely not himself, which at least put extreme somnambulism off the map. He would admit to being glad about that; he'd never be able to live it down if it turned out that he was haunting himself.

Gold paused. Why that word, haunting? Why had that suddenly sprung to mind, instead of something more tangible. Like stalking. Or just generally annoying.

He looked again at the prints where they sat on his desk. The hand was small, female possibly? Once again Gold's mind came full circle to his meeting with Belle in the bar. It couldn't possibly be Belle; she had no idea where he lived for a start. All the same, he couldn’t shake the image of her out of his head when he looked down at the prints. Someone was trying to send him a message, and the only person whom he could think of who would want to send him a message was Belle.

It was ridiculous, he tried to tell himself over and over again, but his brain was having none of it. His sudden unease, the feeling of being watched, and now this handprint on his window, they all seemed to be inextricably linked to Belle. It must just be coincidence, the cynical part of his brain was trying desperately to tell him. Of course it was. The fact that these things had started happening the day after he met Belle had absolutely nothing to do with anything.

But then, the phantom voices of his aunts were there, shouting down his own cynicism with the sage words that nothing was a coincidence, and everything that looked like it was a coincidence was just the universe’s way of telling us that everything in life was far more interlinked than we all like to think.

Gold got up suddenly, grabbing his laptop from his desk drawer and opening it. He hadn’t had any luck with the phone directory but in this digital age, that was not the only way to track someone down.

He typed ‘Belle French’ into Google, and was irrationally angry at the comparative lack of results. There were a few hits that were obviously not the correct Belle French, and the only thing that he could see that looked like it was at all related to the predicament he had found himself in were a couple of small newspaper articles from a local paper in Florida. The first was an announcement that the local library was due to reopen under the directorship of new librarian Belle French. There was a picture, grainy and bad quality, but definitely the same woman that he had met the previous evening. A few years younger, and smiling, but even despite the positive expression he could still make out the dark circles under her eyes. Whatever was bothering her had obviously been doing so for quite some time.

The other piece was an obituary for a Maurice French, who had died of a heart attack three months ago, leaving one daughter – Belle.

Gold sat back in his chair as he digested this new information about his acquaintance. It was not unheard of for people to start believing in some kind of supernatural phenomena after the death of a loved one, be it restless spirits haunting the house or more benevolent ones looking out for them and being a source of comfort. Whatever Belle’s plight was, it looked far more likely to be the former if her broken nights were any indicator.

All the same, something didn’t quite add up about the whole equation. If she was originally from Florida then how on earth had she ended up in small town Maine, of all places? And whilst he might ordinarily have put her problems down to grief over her father’s passing, the photographs seemed to show that it had been going on for much longer than that.

Gold closed the laptop lid; he was determined to get to the bottom of this by whatever means necessary. The snide voice in his head kept telling himself unsuccessfully that he simply wanted to stop people trespassing on his property and attempting to vandalise his house. Did leaving handprints even really count as vandalism?

The more dominant voice in his head, the one that had been suppressed so much in recent years and was only now really remembering the events of his childhood, was telling him that this was perhaps the mystery it took to reignite his interest in the paranormal and fan the flames of his passion once more.

He was restless for the remainder of the day until the bar opened, and to the untrained eye he would have looked like someone in need of a fix. But it was not the alcohol that brought him to _The Spinning Wheel_ as soon as it opened, but a thirst for information. It had been months since something had truly piqued his interest like this, perhaps because this was one case, like the visions he had seen in his childhood, that he actually had a personal stake in.

The barkeep made no comment on his altered personality, the sharpness that now pervaded his movements and words instead of the lethargic, passive man that he had always been before. He simply served up his usual whiskey like he always did.

Gold did not drink the liquor, just turning the glass this way and that and wondering if his trip here had all been in vain after all. There was no guarantee that Belle would be back tonight. His meeting with her may well have been an unrepeatable fluke. All the same, Aunt Elvira’s wise words on coincidence were still running through his thoughts.

He had been in the bar for two hours before she appeared. She seemed paler than she had been yesterday, the circles under her eyes more pronounced, and there was a heaviness in her posture that spoke of both sheer exhaustion and sheer determination to stay awake. When she saw him, she gave him a slight smile of recognition, and she settled herself on the bar stool beside him in response to his unspoken invitation.

“Mr Gold,” she said. “What a coincidence.”

Gold shook his head. “I don’t believe in them.”

Belle gave a snort of dry laughter. “Neither do I.” She paused. “So do you think that we both came here seeking each other?”

“I would think that was likely.”

Belle didn’t respond to him for a long time, ordering a large glass of red wine and sipping it slowly.

“Bad night?” Gold asked. She nodded. “Maybe you’d like to tell me about it?”

She shook her head. “No. I know your reputation. You wouldn’t believe me. Besides, I can’t remember. I can never remember. That’s the whole problem.”

Gold had no idea what he was letting himself in for, but he took the plunge nonetheless.

“Try me.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Three**

Belle shook her head. 

"You'll think I'm crazy, just like everyone else."

Gold shook his head.

"No. I might not believe in whatever it is that you're going to tell me, but I believe that you believe, and that's half the battle. I can see that whatever it is that's troubling you is having an adverse impact on your life." Gold paused, trailing one fingertip around the rim of his tumbler. "You have a genuine fear that you're trying to find a real world explanation for, and I'm offering to provide that real world explanation. That was the entire reason you took an interest in my book, wasn't it? And you found it unhelpful."

Belle nodded. "Yes, you're right." She gave a long sigh, taking a sip of her drink and staring into the depths of the glass, not meeting his eyes. "To be honest, I don't really know exactly what the matter is. I just know that there's something. And whatever it is, I'm afraid of it. And I don't want to be afraid anymore." 

A soft snort of self-deprecating laughter escaped her lips. "Truth be told, this has been going on so long that I don't even know where to start, or what to say. A medical professional would look at me and immediately say that I had some kind of sleep disorder and some kind of memory disorder, but it's not as simple as that."

"Why don't you start at the beginning?" Gold suggested. Since she had already put the idea of a medical explanation for her problems forward, it was the one that he was inclined to take. The body and mind were both mysterious things that no-one could fully hope to understand. There were so many illnesses that scientists could not fathom either a cause or cure for, but there were usually steps that could be taken to mitigate their effects. Perhaps Belle had already tried these and they had failed. Perhaps she felt that her problem was not medical and that such intervention would not help her. 

"I know what you're thinking," Belle said dryly. "And believe me, I've seen enough doctors in my time to know that whatever this is, it can't be treated by a handful of pills or some kind of surgery. If it could I'd be booking myself into that hospital tomorrow. As it is, I'm here." She looked around the bar. "I don't even really know where here is."

"Storybrooke, Maine," Gold pointed out, and Belle gave him a withering look. 

"I know that much. I suppose I don't really know why I'm here. I guess I was just drawn here. Oh, it's more complicated than that. This thing, this... presence. It's taking over my life."

They fell into silence; Belle drained her glass and ordered another, as if the liquor fortified her and gave her the strength she needed to continue with her tale. 

"Why don't you begin at the beginning?" Gold prompted. 

Belle laughed, shaking her head softly. "If we really want to go right back to the beginning then we'll be delving into your most hated territory, Mr Gold." There was a slight smile on her face as she continued in spite of her melancholy, and it was good to see. For a brief moment, something in her face lightened and it brightened the room. "Psychics."

Gold suppressed a groan. Of all the things that he had investigated over his careers, the number of phoney psychics he had encountered and put out of business was a sore point. At one stage, it felt like all he was doing was smacking his head against a brick wall, investigating claims of miracles and seances that turned out to be a load of crap. 

"It's all right," Belle said. "I've never been to one myself, and I've always taken all the reports of these people with a pinch of salt, but you wanted to start at the beginning and that's where I'm starting. It was my mother." She sighed. "Back home in Australia, my mother went to see a psychic whilst she was pregnant with me. It was only meant to be a bit of fun, nothing serious, and she didn't believe any of what he told her. She couldn't remember most of it. Probably about meeting some tall, dark stranger, you know the usual spiel. There was just one thing that unnerved her at the time, and that she didn't really think much about. He said that there was a dark cloud surrounding her child, something that he couldn't see clearly through. I mean, if you're a pregnant lady then you're going to be slightly wary of anything that could harm your baby and although a dark cloud is pretty vague, it still sounds kind of ominous. Still, she thought that perhaps he was just trying to get more money out of her. He was scaremongering to get another reading out of her, where he would say that everything was going to be all right and she didn't need to worry. But the psychic said that he wouldn't read her again. He practically shooed her out of the house, as if he was scared of this strange black cloud."

"But your mother didn't believe what he said?"

"Like I said, she was unnerved by it a little, but in reality, what's a dark cloud? It could be anything. It became a family joke then, every time something out of the ordinary happened, we blamed it on my dark cloud. Now though..."

"You think that there might have been something in the psychic's words and that there is some kind of a dark cloud?"

Belle nodded. 

"Depression and other mental illnesses are sometimes described as being like a dark cloud," Gold said. 

"I know, and I'd love for the explanation to be that simple. I don't really have any other symptoms, and none of the treatments I've tried have really worked."

Gold took a sip of his whiskey, considering her story carefully. She hadn't told him all that much, and nothing that could be explained away. Nothing that really warranted an explanation. Her mother had visited a psychic, which seemed to have no bearing whatsoever on her current position.

"Where's your mother now?" he asked. 

"She died when I was seven," Belle said. "Car accident. She'd been to visit her family in a different town so at least I know that wasn't anything to do with me."

The words made Gold start. "You think you might have had something to do with deaths?"

Belle looked at him sagely, her eyes older than her years. "I've already told you that I have a lot of trouble with my memory," she said. "Who knows what I might have done in the bits I can't remember? My father died three months ago, but I wasn't there when it happened. I was in the house, I was in the next room, but I wasn't... present, if you get my meaning. I woke up and he was dead and I had no memory of anything that had happened. The coroner said it was a heart attack, natural causes, I'd been asleep at the time and didn't realise anything was amiss. No foul play suspected at all, no suspicion against me."

"But you suspect yourself."

Belle nodded. "I don't trust myself. My father might have died from a heart attack, but what if it was something I did that caused it?" She sighed, and they fell into silence again for a long time. "I guess that's why I moved. Up until then I had just about been able to live with it. It was getting worse, the whatever it is, but I could just about manage with Dad's help. Then suddenly I didn't have Dad and I had the terrible fear that it might have been my fault, and I can't live with it any more. I need answers, an explanation, a cure, anything. I just want it all to stop."

Gold took a moment to consider the facts of the case she had presented to him. He was missing one very crucial piece of information.

"What is it that you're trying to live with?" he asked. "This 'whatever it is' as you call it. The dark cloud."

Belle sighed. "I don't know what it is, but I think there's something sharing my brain."

Gold quirked an eyebrow; Belle noticed the motion and gave a little huff. "I knew you wouldn't believe me."

"I'm still listening."

"I call it the Dark One," Belle said, but she was looking at him warily and Gold could see her barriers going up again. "I don't know what it is. I can just feel it in there, sometimes. A little part of my mind that's closed off and doesn't belong to me. And then I have these blackouts, and I can't remember anything that happens during them, and I know that's when it comes out."

A thousand perfectly logical medical explanations flew through Gold's head. Hundreds of historical cases of fits and seizures and blackouts and epilepsy being attributed to possession and witchcraft. 

But Belle had already said that there was no medical explanation; that she had already tried to get one. 

"And I have proof, sort of," Belle said. "Well, nothing that you would call tangible proof. But my dad saw it. He saw me during my blackouts and he said he'd never seen anything like it."

"Did he give any more details?"

Belle shook her head. "No, I could never get it out of him. He was always really rattled though, I can tell you that much. Whatever it was, he never got used to it.”

Her movement was sudden then, she drained the remainder of her whiskey and slipped off the barstool. "This was a bad idea. I shouldn't have said anything. It's stupid. Just forget it. It's nothing. I have blackouts, a lot of people do."

"Wait, Belle!"

But she was already going, hurrying out of the bar, not looking back. Gold wondered what could have spooked her. Maybe she had felt an episode coming on and wanted to get somewhere safe before she succumbed to it. 

Maybe, the less practically-minded and more psychically inclined part of him said, the Dark One was rearing its head and protesting at Belle sharing its secret. Gold rolled his eyes. Belle was not possessed. Possession was impossible. Malevolent evil spirits did not exist. 

Since his entire object in coming to the bar had been to talk to Belle, there wasn't really a lot of point in him remaining. All the same, there was something that he could do, just to satisfy his own curiosity. Whilst the barkeep's back was turned, Gold carefully picked up the glass that Belle had been using with his handkerchief, tucking it into his jacket pocket and placing some bills down on the counter to cover his drink. The walk back to his house felt different tonight. There was something in the atmosphere that was fraught, charged with a particular kind of tension and excitement that Gold had not felt in a very long time. This was the thrill of the chase, the idea that he might find something inexplicable and prove the existence of the paranormal. Of course, in the past, that feeling had so often been followed by disappointment, but in this case, Gold would not mind the disappointment because it would still be a victory for his own common sense and peace of mind. 

Even as he sat down behind his desk and took out the sheet that he had transferred the handprint from the window onto, he was telling himself that he was being utterly ridiculous and since he was at the stage of stealing whiskey tumblers from bars in order to try and prove or disprove a theory, then taking a step back from the city and coming to Storybrooke evidently had not been enough for his nerves. He was going to have to get a lot further away from it all below it took over his life completely. 

He still couldn't bring himself to stop doing what he was doing, though, and he carefully lifted Belle's fingerprints from the whiskey glass, setting to work with his magnifiers. Gold had never had access to any of the high-tech machinery that could match fingerprints to databases within seconds, but he didn't need them. He just needed to compare the two. 

He spent three hours poring over the prints, checking every single detail, every single comparison marker, and then he checked them all again. There was no getting around it, and suddenly his conversation with Belle at the bar took on a far more chilling turn. There was no doubt about it. It was Belle's handprint that had been on his window that morning. Belle had been in his garden, pressing her hand up against the glass. 

Why?


	4. Chapter 4

Gold’s night was once again disturbed, but this time there was no fear or unease involved, more a sense of intense curiosity that would not die. Well, there was still a certain unease, pertaining to the fact that Belle had been in his garden in the middle of the night for no apparent reason. How did she know where he lived? Did she even know where he lived or was her presence here at random? He was inclined to think that the visit had been deliberate, whether Belle realised it or not, because… Well, he had nothing concrete to support that claim, just the strange hunch that wouldn’t leave him alone. There were too many coincidences at work, and Gold was never one to believe in coincidences. She was searching him out, both in her waking and her unconscious life. Although, at the same time, he couldn’t guarantee that her visit to him in the small hours had been an unconscious one. Just because she had not mentioned it to him when they had been talking in the bar the previous evening did not mean that she did not remember it, but it was easy to assume from her self-confessed history of blackouts and memory problems that she had no idea that she’d been in his back yard. Too many loose ends, too few rational explanations. Every time Gold thought that he had found a real-world reason for what was going on in Belle’s mind, something else reared its head to throw him off the scent. He could have worked with a medical explanation if he hadn’t found her handprint. 

At last, after three hours of staring at the ceiling in the darkness and getting nowhere; trying and failing to piece everything together, Gold accepted that he was not going to get to sleep until he had made at least some progress on the case, and to that end he got up and made his way downstairs to his study, grabbing pens and paper and beginning to make notes of everything that had happened, everything he knew, and all the possible tenuous connections that linked it all together. It didn’t really help create a solid theory, but at least he had it all written down and was no longer trying to keep a grasp of all the threads in his mind. He leaned back, tracing his fingertips over all the lines and going over what he knew again and again. He went over and grabbed a few books off his shelves, ones that he had often consulted during the course of his career. They were old favourites that had long brought him comfort, a mixture of healthy cynicism and the more open-minded. He really needed more information on Belle’s condition before he could hope to create any diagnosis, but it seemed that she wouldn’t be opening up to him any time soon. He still had no way of contacting her, or she him. Unless, of course, she knew where he lived and gave him another midnight visit. 

He had been browsing through the medical journals for about an hour when he felt it again, that strange sensation of being watched that had plagued him the previous evening, and without meaning to, he glanced towards the study window. The curtains were closed, but Gold got the distinct impression that should he open them, he would be met with some kind of horrific vision, and the thought was enough to keep him petrified in his seat. There was something out there, he was sure of it. He dragged his eyes back to the book, which was open on the page explaining the significance of delusions and paranoia, and he had to laugh at the irony of it, shaking himself and closing his eyes, trying to quieten down the frightened little voice in the back of his mind that was setting off all the alarm bells and telling him that something very strange was going on. He’d just spooked himself with all this reading about paranoia, that was all. 

The feeling passed, and movement returned to Gold’s limbs although his unease remained. Desperate to satisfy his brain’s craving need for an explanation, he padded over to the window and twitched the curtain back an inch, peering out into the darkness beyond. There was nothing to see. It had all been a figment of his imagination. No rustling in the bushes, no glowing eyes in the darkness, no odd shadows where they shouldn’t be. It was just a feeling, and it could be ignored and put down to overwork and a lack of sleep. Nothing to worry about. 

Gold readjusted the curtains and went back to his desk; despite the exhaustion settling in his body his mind was fraught with activity and he knew that going back to bed was not going to be a viable option yet. He closed the medical journal, since it wasn’t giving him the answers he needed, and turned instead to his desk drawers, pulling out an old notebook full of all the contacts he had made throughout the years. They were grouped by theme, and Gold flipped through to ‘Doctors - Medical and Psychological’. Several of the entries had been crossed out - he had either lost contact with them or had fallen out with them due to his methods, but there were still a couple who would not mind hearing from him and whom he could probably call in a favour from. Victor Whale had worked with him on a couple of cases involving mysterious injuries that had been claimed to be stigmata, and Archie Hopper had always been his go to for mental illnesses. Archie was local too, working out of Storybrooke. It would be easy to pop round to him in the morning and discreetly present the few facts that he had gleaned. He wouldn’t call it a new case, of course. Just something hypothetical. Research. Officially, Gold had retired from his public career, but there was nothing to say that he couldn’t be working on a private project. And in a way, Belle’s case was a private project, a kind of little secret between the two of them that neither really had all the facts to. Gold nodded. He would make an appointment with Archie, framed as a simple fact-finding mission. A shiver ran down his spine, like the feeling of someone walking over his grave, and Gold gave a snort of self-deprecating laughter. Perhaps he ought to make an appointment to discuss his own problems. 

He tried to shake away the feeling, the eerie feeling of not being safe in a previously safe haven, determined not to return to the refuge of his aunts’ spells when there was categorically nothing to worry about, even as the small, frightened part of him kept saying that his vehement denial of strange goings on would be his undoing. A psychic he’d been investigating had told him that once. The woman had turned out to be a fraud as so many of them did, but that final cool statement she had made to him had stuck in Gold’s mind for a long time afterwards, that he ought to believe for his own good. Gold groaned and rested his forehead on his desk. If he didn’t know better then he’d say that he needed a holiday, but this was already supposed to be his holiday and his chance to get away from it all. He couldn’t keep getting away from it all, or he’d be running for the rest of his life. That was what they wanted, to unnerve him and make him feel like nowhere was safe, get him going in circles… 

Gold blinked suddenly. Where the hell had that terrible thought come from? There was no-one chasing him, there was nothing following him, he was going to be fine and he was going to find an explanation for Belle’s condition and neither of them would need to worry again. He grabbed the notebook again where he had dropped it, flicking back through to the page he needed. As he did so, his eyes alighted on another name, one that he had not come across for a few years. Father Joseph Macavoy. The name and contact details were in faded black ink, with a fresher notation added in brackets next to it: _Roman Catholic, defrocked 2014_. He’d managed to stop in the 'religions - various’ section of the book, and he wondered if he’d been looking for it subconsciously. Perhaps Belle’s words about a Dark One sharing her mind had touched something in his memory and he’d made the link to exorcism. Mind you, considering Joseph’s past, he could be forgiven for not wanting anything to do with exorcism ever again. He had not been formally charged over the incident, but he’d been kicked out of the church that had been his life for so long and it had changed the man irrevocably. No, he would not contact Joseph, although he was keen to know how he was getting on now, whether he’d managed to turn his life around. 

Gold snapped the notebook shut and put it back in his desk. He was getting ahead of himself. He needed to rule out the physical and psychological first before he started turning to the religious and mystical, although sometimes they were more linked than he liked to think. The next time he saw Belle he might have to make surreptitious inquiries about her belief system, one never knew. He leaned back in his chair, wishing that he could make progress. He wanted to think that the next time he saw her, he could at least have something to say to set her mind at ease, but all he had was more questions, no answers in sight. He wondered why he was taking this so personally. People had sought him out to consult him hundreds of times before now, and none of them had had this effect on him. Certainly, Gold always tried his best in any case he took on; he would never do a job half-heartedly. But this driven need to solve the mystery came not from a wish to consider it a job well done, but a desire to set Belle’s mind at rest, because even from his brief meetings with her, he could tell that she did not deserve the heavy burden that was weighing down on her mind. Why had she affected him like this? Was he starting to lose the plot as well? 

He got up and left the study, his gaze drawn inexplicably back to the window as he closed the door. The same sinister feeling was still bubbling away under the surface, and he sighed, going back into the room and flinging the curtains back in an attempt to dispel the notion that there were dark forces hiding in his garden once and for all. Grey light was beginning to peek over the horizon; he’d been sitting in the office contemplating for longer than he realised. There was nothing to see in the garden. Of course there wasn’t. 

Until the hedge at the back of the yard twitched, and Gold jumped out of his skin as a pale shape crashed through the bushes and landed on the lawn. He was too afraid to scream, his throat constricted around his breath as he stared out in wide-eyed horror. The small superstitious part of him took this very inopportune moment to crow that he hadn’t been paranoid and there had been something in the garden. 

The shape was not moving and it appeared, to the growing ice in Gold’s stomach, to be human. Eventually, cold and coherent thought returned. Without giving any thought to how whoever it was got there, he needed to go and investigate. Something that he was not going to do in his pyjamas. He made his way up to his bedroom at the top of the house and opened the curtains there, but the shape had not moved. Looking at it from this angle, it was definitely human. Gold dressed quickly and rushed back down the stairs, grabbing a torch and trusting that his cane could be a makeshift weapon should it be required. The grass was wet and dewy under his feet and it squeaked against his shoes horribly loudly as he crept across the lawn. The body was still not moving, and as Gold approached, fresh fear shot through his veins. It was a young woman, dark haired, wearing a simple white nightdress and no shoes, her feet caked with mud and blood.  Even before he turned her over to see her face, he knew who it would be.

“Belle?”


	5. Chapter 5

"Belle?"

She opened her eyes groggily, blinking up at him and not showing the slightest recognition that she knew who he was or where she was. She seemed dazed, almost as if she were drugged, although her pupils were normal and showed no signs of her having taken anything. She shook her head as Gold helped her to sit up, as if she was trying to clear some kind of fog out of her brain and failing, and she kept pressing the heel of her hand firmly against her forehead like she was trying to force some kind of memory to the surface. The skin of her bare arms was icy to the touch and Gold wondered just how long she had been outside with no protection from the elements. Sure, it was late summer but Maine was still not the balmiest of places to spend a night outside in just a nightdress. 

"Belle, are you all right?"

"I..." She looked around her surroundings with complete and genuine bewilderment. "Where am I?" Finally her gaze landed on him with the same utter confusion. "Mr Gold?"

"You're in my garden," Gold replied. "I don't know how you got here, but from the state of your feet..." He looked down to her bloody toes. "I'd say you walked."

She shook her head. "I don't remember. I don't even know where you live, why did I come here?"

She didn't seem to be particularly concerned by her feet or the fact she had no memory of how she came to be in his garden. He wondered if this was related to her condition and she often woke up in strangers' gardens. He could deal with that particular quirk later, for now he was far more worried about her physical wellbeing. 

"Come on, let's get you inside, you're freezing. Can you walk?"

Belle nodded, getting gingerly to her feet and leaning on him heavily as she hobbled towards the house. Their progress was painfully slow, the lame leading the lame.

"Believe me," she muttered. "I've had worse. One time back in Florida I woke up standing on the side of a highway. I'd walked nearly fifteen miles in bare feet and I had broken glass embedded in my heels. Didn't feel a damn thing."

This chilling revelation made Gold worry even more, and he ushered her into the kitchen and down into the nearest chair before going to grab some blankets and first aid supplies for her feet. There was a perfectly rational explanation. Sleepwalking was a common phenomenon and easily explained away by various conditions. Extreme somnambulism had been at the root of many of the cases he had solved during his career, and Belle's was no different. Her unreliable memory, her bad sleep patterns, they could all come down to the sleepwalking, which was a problem for a doctor or psychotherapist to solve. Perfectly simple. 

The issue was that Gold thought that it must have been deeper than that. Although he had not spent a lot of time in conversation with Belle, he knew that she had already sought that kind of help and it had failed her. That meant that there had to be something more at than just the sleepwalking. He returned to the kitchen, Belle was just where he'd left her, tracing patterns on the tabletop and staring out into the middle distance, her expression gloomy. For a moment he thought that she'd zoned out again, but she looked up when he began to wrap the blankets around her and gave him a small smile. 

"Thank you. Sorry about all this."

"It's no trouble, honestly."

"I doubt you have to deal with crazy women invading your garden in their nightwear on a regular basis."

"No, you're definitely the first, but it's all right. You didn't disturb me, I was already awake. Can I get you a drink to warm you up? Tea, coffee, something stronger for the shock?" 

Belle laughed. "By this time it's not really a shock. I ought to be used to it. But tea would be lovely, thank you."

Gold put the kettle on and filled a basin with warm water whilst he waited for it to come to the boil, encouraging Belle to rest her feet in his lap as he dabbed at them with cotton wool, carefully cleaning away the mud and blood and trying to ascertain the extent of the damage. 

"So, this isn't the first time that this has happened," he began.

Belle shook her head with a sigh. "No, not by a long shot."

Gold decided not to pursue it any further, making tea and continuing to tend to Belle's feet as she sipped the brew. There was more colour in her face now, and she seemed to be warming up nicely. Hopefully her feet were the only injuries that she had sustained. Most of the scratches were shallow, but he had no idea how far she might have walked and in what conditions, and he applied plenty of antiseptic to the wounds before he bandaged them.

"Where am I?" Belle asked presently, and Gold looked up in alarm. Had she not been fully compos mentis these last few minutes and couldn't recall that she was in his house? She looked lucid and she gave a sharp, tight smile, showing the obvious pain that she was in. 

"No, I know that I'm in your house, I've not lost that much memory. What I mean is, where is your house in relation to mine?"

Gold gave her his address and Belle was silent for a long while. 

"Is something wrong?" he hedged, although he knew that was a really quite ridiculous thing to say to a woman who had passed out in his garden with no clue how she got there. Of course something was wrong. 

Belle shook her head. "No, not wrong, per se. Just curious. This is the shortest distance that I have ever sleepwalked outside; less than a mile. I'm currently living in the apartment above the library in the town centre. Normally, when I make it outside, I head for roads. Don't know why. I don't usually break into other people's gardens. And always north. I always used to head north, but this time I've come south."

A chill ran down Gold's spine, and he did not want to give voice to the theory that had begun to form in his mind, his logical faculties trying desperately to reshape it into a plausible explanation. 

"Perhaps something in your subconscious was influenced by our conversation earlier in the evening," he suggested. "If it was the last thing on your mind before you went to sleep then it would make sense that your sleeping mind would be affected by it and perhaps seek me out."

"But I don't know where you live," Belle pressed. "At least, I didn't." She took a long gulp of tea and shook herself, as if she was trying to shake the experience from her mind. "Oh well. Stronger locks on the doors I suppose, not that it's ever helped before." She gave a snort. "It's no good me locking myself in. I know where all the keys are."

They fell back into an uneasy silence. Belle's feet were bandaged and the tea was almost drunk, and without those distractions, Gold wasn't sure where to go next. 

"Do you have any memories at all of what happens during your blackouts?" he asked presently. 

"Nope. Well, not on my own. I've had a little success with hypnotherapy in the past, but it's very hit and miss."

"There's a psychotherapist in the town who practises hypnotherapy," Gold said, thinking again of Archie. "If you want to try again."

"I don't know. I'd got to the stage where it's so much a part of my life that I barely noticed it any more, but now, with this, with coming to you subconsciously... Maybe it is a cry for more help. I just don't want anyone to think I'm crazy. I'm not crazy."

"I don't think you are," Gold said earnestly. He had no idea what was happening, and whilst he might not be as accepting of a supernatural solution as Belle was, he knew that there was definitely something going on that was beyond his scope. "Dr Hopper is very good. He won't think that you're crazy either. What have you remembered in the past?"

"Just vague impressions, really. Road signs that I've passed when I've been walking, and the feeling that I always have to head north. But... It's silly."

"I don't care. A silly explanation is better than no explanation at all."

Belle looked at him. "You know, you're different to how I expected you to be."

"Oh dear."

"No, it's good. You're willing to listen. I thought you'd just dismiss me out of hand as a raving lunatic."

"You're definitely not a raving lunatic. You're scared. That was the first thing that I noticed about you. I said last night, you have a genuine fear and it would be in poor taste for me to ridicule that. I can't dispel your fear if I don't know what it is that's frightening you, so I'm listening. And I'll continue to listen until we've worked out what on earth is going on."

"If it's even from earth," Belle muttered darkly. "I've more than once considered an alien implant in my brain."

"Well, we'll keep it as a back up theory," Gold said; he couldn't help but smile at the notion. "So what was it that you thought was silly? From your past hypnotherapy sessions."

"The things I do remember, the little snips of memory and impressions... It's like they don't belong to me. I'm viewing them through someone else's eyes and someone else's thoughts. Like that need to go north. That's not my mind saying that, it's something else telling me to do it, telling me that I have to keep going north."

"Always north?"

"Yes. Until today, as I already said. And ending up here, in Storybrooke, about as far north as I can go without crossing into Canada... I don't think I made the conscious decision to come here. I think the Whatever It Is made that decision for me." She gave the briefest flicker of a smile. "Maybe it was looking for you."

"Maybe." Unfortunately, that was the exact same awkward conclusion that Gold had come to, that he had tried to push down to the back of his mind. That Belle, whilst living in Florida, had always headed north towards Maine, was telling, but perhaps the fact that they had continued to fall over each other was planting evidence where there really was none. Perhaps he was too keen to find patterns and get this thing solved already - not that his conclusions were any closer to being a solution. 

All the same - he wasn't one to believe in coincidence. 

"Thank you. For the tea and the first aid. And for listening. It helps to know that I'm not alone." Belle glanced out of the kitchen window as the morning sun continued to strengthen outside. "I should really go home."

"I'll drive you."

"Mr Gold..."

"Well, you can't exactly go back the way you came," he pointed out, indicating her bandaged feet. "And I guess that if you know the route to my house in your waking life, it might save you thrashing about in the bushes at night."

Belle gave a snort of laughter. "I guess you're right. It'll be interesting to see if it happens again. Well, no, interesting is the wrong word. It'll be absolutely terrifying because it always is. Waking up in a different place to where you last remember being."

Gold took note of the wording. "You don't wander just when you sleep, then?"

"No. Mostly when I sleep. Probably because the conscious part of my brain that belongs to me is switched off and the Thing... The Dark One... can take over and have free rein to take me onto highways in the middle of the night for whatever reason. But I've had blackouts in the middle of the day before now. Those are more frightening. It's as if my own mind isn't strong enough to keep the Thing at bay all the time."

"I was serious about that psychotherapist," Gold said. "I can give you his number if you want."

Belle nodded. "Yes, that would be very kind." She paused. "I really don't want to impose and I know that this is a strange request, but would you mind coming with me, please?"

Gold's eyebrows shot to his hairline. "No, I'd be happy to come. Why?"

"I'm not quite sure I trust myself to be alone with another person whilst intentionally semi-conscious. My dad always came with me to my previous hypnosis appointments and nothing happened then, but I want to make sure that no-one gets hurt."

For some reason, that statement unnerved Gold more than anything that had gone before. He thought of Belle's first words to him, about screaming in the night, and about the handprint on his window. For now, he decided not to mention her previous visit, since she obviously could not recall it herself. Perhaps after her appointment with Archie, if her hypnosis session revealed anything else.

He gave a tight smile that he knew couldn't look at all genuine. "I'll call Dr Hopper and see when he can fit you in."

 


	6. Chapter 6

“Ok, Belle, I just want you to relax now. Remember that you’re in a safe environment and that everything you say will be kept between us three.”

“It’s not my own safety I’m worried about,” Belle muttered, but Dr Hopper didn’t seem to pay the comment any mind, and just indicated for her to lie back on the couch and close her eyes whilst he took a seat by her head, speaking in a low, calm tone as he encouraged her conscious mind to sleep and her subconscious to take over. Sitting in a comfortable chair in the corner of the room, Gold was having trouble staying awake himself, and he forced himself not to listen to the doctor’s words and instead focus on the various pictures on the walls; dreary, harmless watercolours of unknown landscapes. He wondered if Archie’s hypnosis patients had ever been unconsciously influenced by his choice of office decoration and seen windswept trees and bleak moors whilst they were under, or if it was a logical decision on the doctor’s part to have scenery so boring and nondescript that no-one could possibly use it in a dreamscape.

After tending to Belle’s feet and making sure that she had not suffered any further injuries as a result of her nocturnal escapades, Gold had called in a favour with Archie and got the earliest appointment that he could, that afternoon. Having driven Belle home and then called back to pick her up again not eight hours later, he wouldn’t be surprised if the local gossip mill started churning out all sorts of ridiculous rumours about what was going on between the new librarian and the grumpy old hermit who lived in the pink house on the hill. Gold couldn’t really care less what the locals thought of him; they’d long since learned that he was an antisocial creature and he ought to be left well alone, and whilst those of them who recognised him from his media career might wonder what had happened to make him so disillusioned, none were so stupid or so brave as to ask. He did have to wonder what Belle would make of it all, starting a new life in a new town and trying, it seemed, to get away from the horrors in her past, but then again, she seemed to be just as reclusive as he was - when she wasn’t wandering about at night, of course.

He pulled his attention back to the couch where Belle was lying, her eyes closed and her hands clasped together tightly over her chest. For all she appeared to be asleep, there was still tension in her posture, and Gold wondered if Archie was having difficulties getting her to relax enough to go under. Gold had never had hypnotherapy himself, but he had sat in on a few sessions like this during the course of his investigations, as he and the doctor had tried to unlock suppressed memories in the hope of finding out some hitherto unknown key to certain phenomena going on in people’s lives. It wasn’t always successful, but sometimes keen insights could be found if one knew where to look, and more importantly, knew how to interpret the often garbled information that was given.

Archie’s voice continued to patter on in his soft, soothing tone, and gradually, Belle relaxed. The doctor gave a satisfied smile; she was in a state of hypnosis and they could begin. He looked over at Gold and caught his eye, jerking a thumb towards the door. Gold nodded his understanding and the two men stepped into the doorway, keeping half an eye on the sleeping Belle as they spoke.

“I’m not sure what we’re going to find here,” Archie said. “Depending on her level of consciousness at the time of the episode, she might not remember anything at all, or she might have blocked it from memory as something traumatic. I just want you to be prepared for something strange.”

“Dr Hopper, I found her in my garden with no clue as to how she got there or where she was, believe me, I’m prepared for strange.”

“Well, not strange then. Perhaps disturbing is a better word.”

“I’ve been disturbed since I first met her. After that woman in Vermont who started screaming at the top of her lungs because she thought a plague of locusts was following her, I think I can handle most things.” He didn’t say _anything_ , because Belle’s case had already proved to be one of the more unique that he had ever encountered and it might well pull up some more brand new experiences before it was out.

The doctor nodded and they went back into the room. Belle’s semi-conscious state did not seem to be at all restless or show any signs of malicious activity like she feared it would, and Archie began.

“All right, Belle, I want you to think about last night. Where are you?”

“I’m in my apartment,” Belle said. “It’s night time but the curtains are open and I’m looking out of the window.”

“Are you looking at something in particular? What can you see?”

“Just the road outside. There’s nothing there, but I know I need to go outside.”

“Why do you need to go outside?”

“I’m not right.”

Gold quirked an eyebrow at this nonsensical statement but Archie took it in his stride and continued the session.

“Why aren’t you ‘right’, Belle?”

“Something’s missing. It’s outside. I have to go outside.”

“What’s outside, Belle?”

“What I need.”

Gold shifted uncomfortably in his chair and closed his eyes. Always north, always north, always north, until now she’d come to Storybrooke and instead of going north she’d headed for him, her subconscious mind telling her that there was something she needed out there, out in his direction. He tried to push it down. Belle had come to him for help in diagnosing her condition. Could it be that the thing she needed was his expertise? Could it simply be a case of her sleeping mind reminding her to seek him out for his help, a perfectly benign reason? He wanted to believe it, but at the same time, he couldn’t rid himself of the sinking feeling that something more sinister was at work here.

“What do you need, Belle?” Archie asked. Gold was almost afraid to hear the answer, but he needn’t have worried.

“I don’t know. Something. Something that I don’t have.”

“What don’t you have?”

“The connection.”

Archie glanced over at Gold, who shrugged. He made a few notes on the jotter in front of him, but nothing that Belle was saying was really making any sense. Perhaps once she was fully conscious again, she could cast some light on the matter.

“All right, we’ll leave that train of thought,” Archie said. “You’re standing in your apartment looking out of the window. What do you do next?”

“I go out. It takes a long time to get out because there are a lot of locks and each key is in a different place. I’m not supposed to go out at night so I try to make it as difficult as I can. But I know where all the keys are even if I hide them in a different place every night. I go out and I start walking.”

“Have you got shoes on, Belle?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“They are not important.”

Gold startled. The tone of Belle’s voice had changed, from soft and slightly sleepy to sharp and hard, her enunciation clear and almost, but not quite, free of her Australian-Floridian twang. Again, Archie took this all in his stride.

“What is important, Belle?”

“I am not Belle.”

“Who are you then?”

“That is not important.”

“What is important?”

“The connection!”

Belle’s eyes snapped open and she sat bolt upright, panting, her eyes darting from Archie to Gold and back again.

“What happened?” she asked breathlessly.

“Nothing happened,” Archie reassured her. “You came out of the hypnotic state unexpectedly, that’s all.”

Belle shook her head. “No, no, I blacked out again. I knew where I was, I knew I was here in your office and I was talking about what had happened last night, but then everything went black.”

Gold thought of the chilling change in her voice and of the four fearsome words. _I am not Belle_.

“I think I want to go home now.” Belle got up off the couch and Archie let her pass towards the door; Gold rushed to follow her, miming that he would call Archie later to follow up on the strange events that had just transpired. Belle was halfway down the stairs onto the street when he caught up to her.

“This has happened before, hasn’t it?” he said. “Blacking out whilst already in a hypnotic state.”

Belle nodded. “Now can you see why I wanted you there? Who knows what I might have done.”

“You weren’t showing any signs of being violent, if that makes you feel any better.” They had reached the street by this point and Belle took in a few deep lungfuls of cool air before speaking again,

“I suppose it does, in a way. This thing hasn’t taken full control of me yet.” She gave a self-deprecating little laugh. “Maybe I should undergo hypnosis whilst in a hypnotic state and that would get to the bottom of it all. Double-layer hypnosis.”

“I’m not sure if that’s possible but anything’s worth a try.”

Belle leaned back against the Cadillac, parked up outside Dr Hopper’s office. “I can’t understand how you’re so calm about it all,” she said. “If I was you I’d be running screaming in the opposite direction and moving as far away as possible.”

Gold had briefly considered doing just that, but he also had the sinking feeling that no matter where he went in the world, Belle - or rather the entity that was sharing Belle’s mind - would find him.

“The outward serenity is just a mask, I assure you,” Gold said. “Internally all sorts of alarm bells are ringing and I’m freaking out. But having seen as much as I have over the years it’s a reaction that I’ve learned to squash in order to see things through to the end.”

Belle finally met his eyes, searching for the truth in his.

“I’m prepared to see this through to the end,” Gold said firmly. He was involved now, and even if he wanted to distance himself from the case, Belle’s unconscious fixation with him meant that he couldn’t. Far better for him to be right here in the thick of it where he could keep an eye on everything that was going on.

“I’m almost afraid to ask what I said when I was out.”

“You said that shoes were not important.”

Belle laughed. “Really?”

“Yes. Archie asked you why you weren’t wearing any shoes.”

“Yeah, that’s the last thing I remember. Anything else?”

“Yes.” Gold didn’t elaborate. _I am not Belle_. It ought to be easy to explain away, a personality disorder, something, anything, any kind of medical explanation. Two separate personalities in her head that saw each other as completely distinct people. But even then, those personalities usually had names, lives of their own. _That is not important_. Something told Gold that this went far deeper than the workings of Belle’s brain. He would tell her if she asked, but right now he knew that it would only serve to unnerve her further, and she had already run out on him twice when they had started to try and work through her problem. Perhaps her still not entirely explained arrival in his garden had brought them together somewhat, because she was still here, still standing with him rather than running away - he had brought her in the car but it was a short distance for her to make her way back to the comparative safety of her apartment on foot.

She shook her head. “Not yet. I don’t want to know yet. Let me process the shoes for a while first.” She was trembling from head to toe, a delayed reaction to the shock she’d had in the office, and Gold’s heart went out to her.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” he asked, indicating the diner further up the road. “We can go and calm your nerves and talk about things wholly unrelated to what just happened. A little bit of normality in the midst of all this chaos.”

Belle didn’t respond for a moment, then gave a slow nod.

“All right. That sounds nice. Thank you.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Seven**

They received a few looks as they entered the diner together, but Gold was used to receiving looks wherever he went and Belle was too abstracted to care, sliding into a booth in the far corner as Gold went to order their drinks.

“It looks like we’re going to be the talk of the town for the foreseeable future,” he said as he returned with the mugs. “The town curmudgeon having tea with the beautiful new arrival. They’re probably going to think that I’ve got you under some kind of spell.” Belle laughed. It was good to see her with a genuine smile on her face; she’d had precious little to smile about during their previous interactions, and she did have a beautiful smile. It lit up her whole face and made the lines of worry and the dark shadows beneath her eyes fade a little. He wished that their interactions didn’t have to be so dark and draining on the both of them, because he really wanted to see her smile more often. Perhaps as they got to the bottom of the mystery and they discovered the clues and patterns that would help her, she would gain peace and confidence from knowing that they were doing something, and she would smile more.

That said, it might have completely the opposite effect and make her even more worried. Whatever happened, he hoped that they could find a solution in the end and then, definitely, she would smile.

Or she’d be dead.

Gold shook that thought away. He was absolutely, definitely not about to let that happen on his watch. He was going to find whatever it was that was sharing her mind, make it leave, and allow her to live in peace again. Hopefully in Storybrooke. She said that she had been drawn to the town, just as she had always been drawn north to what Gold was now accepting - with a calmness that surprised him - was himself. He could only hope that once she no longer had that compulsion on her, she would remain. He had been serious in his suggestion of them talking about anything other than the bleak facts of her case; he really did want to get to know her as a person outside of her condition.

“So how are you finding the town so far?” he asked lightly.

“It’s nice. Small and homely, out of the way. Not too many people. I feel safe here - as safe as can be expected I think, but we’re not talking about that. It’s a far cry from Florida in terms of weather though. I can’t say that I’m looking forward to the snows when winter comes.”

“Oh, you’ll love it when you see it. I’m sure that Ruby will gladly take you tobogganing on plastic diner trays if you ask her.”

Belle peered over his shoulder to where Ruby Lucas was ensconced behind the counter, watching them with undisguised and morbid fascination, and Belle gave a little wave.

“I think she’s working out the best excuse to get you away from me,” Gold said. “She’s got it into her head that I’m some kind of demon that can’t be trusted around beautiful young women.”

“I would never have put you down as a ladykiller, Mr Gold,” Belle said playfully.

“I’m not. You’re the first woman I’ve ever brought in here. Maybe that’s why she’s so worried. She thinks I’m going to eat you.”

“I think I can defend myself.”

They fell into silence as they drank their tea, and Gold watched Belle out of the corner of his eye as she looked around the diner. She was so bright, and it was such a shame that her light was constantly dampened by the things going on in her nocturnal life.

“How long have you been here?” Belle asked presently, making small talk in the absence of any other topic that didn’t really lead into her own troubles.

“A while. When the industry didn’t really hold any appeal for me anymore, I decided it would be a good idea to shut up shop and take a break. I’ve made enough to live comfortably on my own. I keep telling myself that I ought to work on another book, but so far since I’ve been here I haven’t written a word.”

“What would this one be about?” Belle asked. “Debunking all the things that you couldn’t cover in your first one, or something different?”

“I’m not sure, to be honest. I have all these ideas in my head but none of them ever really seem to come to anything. I was thinking of going in for something fictional, that way it wouldn’t matter how fantastical the circumstances seem, I know that I have complete control over what any of the participants are going to do at any given moment. Or perhaps a collection of the unsolved cases of my career.”

“Really? I didn’t think that there were any such cases. Your reputation has always been so cast-iron. Surely it would be terrible for anyone to find out that there were cases you hadn’t cracked.”

“Well, believe it or not I wasn’t always as cynical as I’ve grown to be. I was an investigator first and foremost and like Mulder, I wanted to believe.”

“What made you change your mind? It’s a pretty big u-turn.”

“My naive young self discovered that the world is cruel. But there are a few cases that I would like to return to, and maybe see if there is a real-world explanation for them. Not necessarily to say that the perpetrators were frauds, which is what I spent so much of the latter part of my career doing. More trying to set the record straight. Still, those things are all in the past now; ultimately I don’t think there’s any use in dragging them up.” Gold thought again of the shadows outside his window when he was young, and he wondered if they would ever return and allow him the opportunity of a thorough investigation now that he had the tools to do so.

“Well, whatever you do end up writing, I would love to read it,” Belle said. “I suppose that’s an occupational hazard. I want to read everything. I was determined to read every book in the library when I was working down in Florida.”

“Every single book?”

“It would have taken me about three centuries, but I had the determination,” Belle said. There was a cheeky little grin on her face and Gold couldn’t tell if she was being serious or not. “A good librarian should always be able to recommend books to her patrons, no matter what subject they might be about. I will admit, I was planning to leave the heavy science textbooks till last though. I didn’t really mind if I didn’t have time for those.”

“What made you become a librarian?” Gold asked.

“My mother. She instilled the love of books into me, and I always knew that if I didn’t end up doing something where I could work with books then life wouldn’t be worth living. There’s something magical about a well-written book, I think. A good story can take you to places and you can live vicariously through these books. We might never ride dragons or have sword fights, but we can imagine what they might be like, and every author has a slightly different way of telling these stories. Everyone says that there are only about seven basic plots in the world - the quest, the rite of passage, the cycle and so forth, but there are an infinite number of tales to be told. They can make us forget who we are for a while. What we are. You can never feel weird when you’re reading a book because you know that somewhere out there in the great big fictional universe, there’s someone out there who’s got it worse than you. There’s some comfort in that, I think.”

“Yes, I can imagine that there is.”

“And I love to learn.” Belle shrugged. “Even the non-fiction books, I still find them fascinating for the most part. There’s so much out there in the universe that we know nothing about, and books provide that gateway, allowing us to learn about the world that we’re part of. And the worlds that we’re not a part of.”

Gold thought back to Belle’s comments when she first met him, about how his book had not been helpful to her. He wondered what other textbooks on the subject she had studied in the quest to solve her problem, but he was trying to steer their conversation away from such things, and he left it aside, asking her about her father, her childhood in Australia, whatever he could think of to gain a broader picture of her life and through it, how this dark shadow in her life had affected her. She was reticent at first, asking more questions than she answered, and Gold could respect that. They had come to know each other in very strange circumstances and despite all that had passed between them in the last few hours, they were practically strangers still. But by the time their tea was drunk, she was chatting animatedly, and Gold thought that he’d managed to perhaps lift the shadows of doubt from her mind for a few minutes at least.

Ruby was still eyeing them from the counter, but there was less suspicion in her face now and more curiosity.

“I think she’s more interested in me than in the fact we’re here together,” Belle said. “I haven’t really been out and about much since I came here. She’s probably wondering who the mysterious stranger is and why she hasn’t introduced herself.”

“Well, do feel free to go over and make her acquaintance. She has a certain exuberant quality which can be a little alarming to the uninitiated, but she’s a sweet girl as far as I can tell.”

“Not a social butterfly, Mr Gold?”

“Not at all.”

“Well, neither am I. Perhaps now’s not the time for making a lot of new friends. I think I’d rather find my feet here first.”

There was a melancholy tone in her voice, and Gold wondered how many friends and acquaintances her condition had driven away over the years. It made him even more determined to stick with her through to the end, and to help her get back to living a normal life - not that she had ever really had one. This presence, the dark shadow that the psychic had warned her pregnant mother about, it had been with her for her entire life, always looking over her shoulder and warning off potential contacts.

Suddenly, Gold had an epiphany.

“Mr Gold?”

Belle was looking at him with a worried expression.

“Sorry, what?”

“You zoned out there. I thought you’d done a me.”

“No, no, I had an idea.”

“Well, ideas are good.”

“I certainly hope they are.”

Their tea was drunk and although it seemed cold to suddenly leave Belle, he was anxious to follow through this train of thought before he lost it, or something else happened that could throw a spanner in the works. Belle seemed to understand though, and they left the diner together, walking back in the direction of the Cadillac.

“Well, I’ll let you get back to your idea,” Belle said.

“Call me if anything strange happens,” Gold pressed. “Anything at all.”

“I’d never be off the phone,” Belle warned. “Strange is my default at the moment.” She paused. “Before you go, can you tell me what I said whilst I was out?”

Gold didn’t want to tell her. She was already so scared and exhausted by the night and now the day’s occurrences, and he didn’t want to add more worries to her plate. But she deserved the truth, and considering that she was the one whose mind this was affecting, there was no use in trying to hide it from her to protect her.

“After saying that your shoes weren’t important, you said that you were not Belle. When Archie asked who you were, you said that wasn’t important either. He asked you what was important, and you said ‘the connection’. Then you woke up.”

“The connection. I remember talking about the connection when I first went under.”

“Any idea what it means?”

Belle shook her head. “Not a clue. But I’ll let you know if anything occurs to me. I’ll call you soon.”

Gold nodded. “I’m looking forward to it.”

And he was. Even if she just called to say hello rather than giving him any new leads in the case. He just wanted to hear her voice and make sure that she was all right. He’d enjoyed talking with her this afternoon, and he really wanted to do it again.

But first, there was an idea to follow up on, and Gold returned to his study with renewed vigour. His eyes alighted on the window where the handprint had appeared a few days prior. He still had not mentioned the fact that this morning’s visit to his garden was not Belle’s first, and he wondered if it was something that he ought to tell her before pushing that thought to the back of his mind.

The revelation he’d had was that he was approaching this problem from entirely the wrong angle. He had spent so long in his life debunking paranormal phenomena that his automatic instinct was to assume a real-world solution to everything, and in his defence, it was a real-world solution that Belle was seeking. But his conversation with her this afternoon had made him remember that he used to investigate these things from the opposite point of view, seeking out a supernatural solution. Perhaps if he came at it from this angle, and he could rule out a supernatural cause to Belle’s problems first, the real-world solution would present itself.

Gold sat down at his desk and reached for his contact book again. Time to call in the cavalry for an entirely different approach.

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for this chapter: alcoholism

**Eight**

Joseph Macavoy, former priest of the catholic church, had a headache, but since this was his usual state of being, he ignored it and tried his best to carry on with his day. As tempting as it was to reach for the unopened bottle of scotch on the top shelf of the right-hand kitchen cabinet, he retained enough dignity to know that opening a bottle of whisky at half-past eight in the morning was the mark of a desperate man, and he liked to think that he was not desperate just yet. So he reached for coffee instead, knowing that it wouldn’t do anything for his headache until he washed down a couple of ibuprofen with it. He also knew that taking ibuprofen on an empty stomach was a very bad idea, so the coffee washed down two paracetamol and he sat down heavily on the sofa with his mug, waiting for the headache to subside and his growling, acidic stomach to finally quieten and demand slightly more substantial nutrition than the solely liquid variety.

It took him quite a while to realise that there was a red light blinking in the corner of the room, and that the red light was in fact the button on his phone that showed he had a message. Considering hardly anyone ever called him, Joseph was intrigued enough to go over and investigate.

_“You have one new message. Received yesterday at 11:56 PM.”_

Joseph pinched the bridge of his nose. He had not been in at 11:56 PM the previous day, and none of the few people who called him would be calling him at such a time of the night anyway unless it was an emergency. And if it was an emergency, then they would have kept ringing until they got through to him, or they would have come round and banged on his door until he dealt with the emergency. His mind working with the same speed that his brain woke up, Joseph gave a long sigh as he realised who had called him and why they had called him at such a strange time.

_“Number 001…”_

Yes, it was as he suspected, an American number. Joseph had not been to America for a long time, and he only knew one person there.

 _“Joseph, it’s Rum Gold. I need to pick your brains about something.”_ There was a long pause and the awkwardness in Gold’s voice was apparent. It was a long time since they had last worked together and an awful lot had happened to Joseph in the intervening time. When he’d last been in Maine with Gold, he’d still been a priest and he’d still been a respected practitioner in his field and he’d still been sober. _“Please could you call me when it’s convenient? This is… well… this is an important one. Thanks. I hope you’re keeping well.”_

Joseph raised an eyebrow and deleted the message. It was not that he blamed Gold for what had happened to him, indeed, Gold was on the other side of the world and had had absolutely nothing to do with that train of disastrous events, but all the same, it was not a train of events that Joseph liked to be reminded of if at all possible. If Gold needed assistance of the kind Joseph could give him, then surely there were people on the correct continent in the correct time zone who could help him.

He was about to get up and go about his day - not that there was a lot to his days these days - but something kept him sitting on the floor beside the phone. Something that was not the pain his head or the still roiling nausea. This contact had come completely out of the blue. Joseph had not exactly been keeping tabs on his old friend since their last excursion together, but he knew that Gold had been out of the paranormal business for a while, and Joseph was morbidly intrigued by what had caused him to return to it. And to need Joseph’s help, of all people’s. His skill set was a fairly unique one.

Joseph thought back to the first time that he had encountered Rum Gold, years ago now, back when he had been a respected member of the church, trusted with some of the most delicate tasks that the priesthood had to offer. Including, but not limited to, the investigation of apparent miracles. As a paranormal investigator, Rum was also interested in miracles; seeking to prove that they were nothing of the sort. Joseph himself always approached the problems with an open mind and heart, instead of Gold’s approach, which had become increasingly cynical as the years had passed. True, that first case that they had ended up working on together had turned out to have been a fake, but unlike Gold, Joseph retained his faith in the mysterious ways of the Lord and would investigate each case that came across his desk with the same neutral standpoint and careful method.

And as he knew to his cost, some of the strange phenomena that he had been called upon to look into were most certainly real.

The two men had been intrigued by each other, perhaps both a little wary of the other’s methods, but when their paths had crossed, they did work well together. A man of science and a man of faith, naturally. Joseph snorted. Right now it felt like his faith was the only thing left keeping him together, and even that was wearing thin right now. He thought back to Gold’s message again, and wondered what he could possibly need. Joseph was not a debunker, he never had been. If Gold wanted his help proving something false, then he was looking in the wrong direction.

If he wanted something proving true, beyond all reasonable doubt, then Joseph was certainly someone whom he could turn to. The real question was why, after all these years, would Gold have changed his tune?

At length Joseph got up from the floor and moved into his make-shift office: one corner of his bedroom stacked high with shoeboxes full of his old casework – at least, the files that had not been shipped off to the Vatican. Naturally, these were all the phonies. Any real, firm evidence of the existence of God – and indeed, the devil – were all kept carefully in archives away from the eyes of a global congregation who were not yet ready to deal with the news.

Joseph’s filing system was unique in that not even he knew where anything was, and it took him almost two hours of rifling through scraps of paper and old case notes that were not in any kind of order to find the details of that first case he had worked on with Gold, a statue of the Madonna that had supposedly begun weeping blood. Gold had been researching such things for his book, a section on religious phenomena.

It had not been blood. The paint on the statue had an unusually high concentration of iron particles and was rusting beneath the pigment, the red bleeding through onto the pale coloured skin, the contours of the face making the rivulets run down from the eyes to the mouth. Tears of blood. Some local smart-arse (culprit still unidentified years later) had added traces of blood from an abattoir to complete the illusion, meaning that the test results had come back showing that the substance was indeed blood.

They’d kept in touch after that, for a while at least, until Joseph’s time in America had come to an end and he’d returned to his home in England. Gold was methodical, if a little too focussed on proving that the things he was investigating were hoaxes, and he was a useful ally to have when Joseph had to focus on matters of faith and religion and, often placating the people involved in the miracle. Gold could focus on the actual scientific work involved.

In the past, it had always been Joseph who called Gold for help. Now it was the other way around and the more Joseph looked through his old files, the more he kept thinking that something was definitely amiss on the other side of the pond.

Gold wouldn’t call him on the off-chance or by accident. He wanted something specific. Something that Joseph knew about, and there was one thing that Joseph knew more about than most.

Right at the bottom of the stack of shoeboxes, weighted down so heavily with all the paperwork on top of it that it had sunk far down into the pile of the carpet and was barely visible, was an old book that Joseph had not opened in months. He had no intention of opening it again now, but he did mine through the boxes in order to free it. The pages seemed to be stuck together through so much compression, and in a way Joseph was glad that he had an excuse not to open it. At least he’d got it out. He ran his fingers over the embossed letters in faded gold on the cover.

_A Study of Demons_

The concept of good and evil had fascinated Joseph for as long as he could remember. It wasn’t one of the reasons why he had joined the church, but once he had become involved in the branch of phenomena investigation, it had reared its head again and started to gnaw away at the back of his mind. Because for all the examples of miracles and God’s grace that he investigated, there were also the darker cases, the ones that no-one in the church had liked to talk about. The bad miracles. The opposites.

Joseph took a deep breath. He could still walk away, ignore Gold’s message and go about his life as normal. But in a way, he knew that he was already involved. As he waited for the time to tick by and for morning to come in Maine, his eyes flickered once more to the kitchen cabinet where the unopened bottle of whisky stood. No, he would have to save that as a reward for after the conversation took place. This was something that he would have to do with a completely clear head, no matter how painful that head might be.

Afternoon came, and with it morning in America, and Joseph dialled Gold’s number. His hands were shaking, both with the need of the alcohol and with nerves, wondering what would happen.

_“Rum Gold.”_

“Rum, it’s Joseph Macavoy. I got your message.”

_“Good. I was hoping you’d be able to help me. I’ve taken on a new case.”_

“I gathered, I’m just not sure what you need me for. I was always more inclined to believe in the supernatural, you were the great demystifier.”

 _“I know. It’s complicated.”_ There was another sigh on the other end of the phone. _“I’m taking a different approach to this one. It’s proving difficult.”_

“I’m listening.” Gold had always been coy with details; he liked to keep his cards close to his chest so that he couldn’t be pre-empted.

_“All right, I’ll just say it. Joseph, if you’re communicating with a demon, how do you get it to co-operate with you?”_

Joseph blinked for a while, saying nothing. Whilst he’d expected something vaguely along those lines, he had not expected it to be quite so dramatic or blunt.

“You’re dealing with a demon?” he asked faintly. “Rum, you know what happened the last time I dealt with such things.”

_“I know, and believe me, I wouldn’t be dragging you into this if I knew anyone else who could help me. I know that this must bring back some painful memories.”_

Joseph snorted. “That would be putting it mildly. Do you honestly, truly believe that you’re dealing with an evil force?”

_“I don’t know, but I want to cover all eventualities and hopefully cross them off so that once I’ve crossed off all the paranormal possibilities I’m left with a real-world one. Unfortunately, this is the only avenue I’ve got at the moment.”_

“I’m going to need a bit more context, Rum.”

Joseph listened wide-eyed and silent as Gold outlined Belle’s case to him, the woman sharing her mind with a malevolent entity that was causing her to seek out Gold. Looking for a connection, saying shoes weren’t important…

It was by far the most fascinating case that Joseph had ever come across in his career, and were he still practising, he would definitely be investigating it as a possible possession.

_“Joseph? Are you still there?”_

“Yes, yes, I’m here. That’s… Well, that’s quite a tale you’ve told me, Rum.”

_“I know, I wouldn’t believe it myself if I hadn’t had it happen to me.”_

“I guess the first thing to try would be to communicate with the entity directly. Ask it outright questions. What is it called, where does it come from, what is it seeking. Mind you, if this thing only comes out when she’s unconscious, you might need a slightly more creative approach as to how you ask the questions. Hypnosis might not be the best track. If it’s as malevolent as you think it is then it’s best to speak to it on its own terms.”

_“I have an idea. Thank you, Joseph.”_

“Any time. Let me know what happens.”

_“I will. Thanks for your time.”_

They rung off, and Joseph stared down at the phone for a long time before getting up and going to open the new bottle, taking a long slug straight from it to steel his nerves. With any luck, that would be the end of it. Gold would get to the bottom of it, find his perfectly satisfactory explanation, and all would be well.

All the same, Joseph couldn’t help but wonder what was going on across the Atlantic, and despite the feeling of dread that talking about demons always brought on him, he was anxious to know what the case would bring.

For the poor woman’s sake if nothing else.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for this chapter: references to attempted suicide and prescription drug abuse
> 
> Please note: Dormex is a fictional medication, any similarities to existing drugs are entirely coincidental.

 

**Nine**

The afternoon after he had spoken to Joseph in the morning found Gold in the pharmacy on a completely unrelated errand, thoughts of the supernatural far from his mind as he searched for his usual brand of toothpaste, which appeared to have vanished from the shelves. It was only when he heard the beginnings of, not a dispute, but definitely a pointed discussion, that his attention was drawn out of the immediate environs and back into the periphery.

“I’m sorry, I just can’t sell you that many in one batch,” Tom Clark, the pharmacist, was saying.

It was the other voice that caught Gold’s attention, because having spent so much time with its owner over the past couple of days, he would recognise it anywhere.

“Please.” Belle sounded wrecked, her voice hoarse. “Please, I need this strong a dose. I can handle it, believe me.”

“Miss, I’ll lose my license if I sell you that many. One pack at a time, that’s your max. I don’t want you to do yourself harm.”

“Please,” Belle begged. “I used to take prescription Dormex, that’s triple the strength of these and I was on a double dose.”

Gold slipped around the end of the aisle so that he could see the counter. Belle was standing there, her arms wrapped tightly around her chest as if she was trying to physically hold herself together. Tom gave her a sad, sympathetic smile and pushed the pile of sleeping pill boxes off to one side.

“Miss, I suggest that you go to the doctor and get him to put you back on Dormex if you’re having trouble sleeping.”

Belle shook her head. “No, you don’t understand… I just want a good night’s sleep for once in my life.”

She looked up at that moment and saw Gold standing off to one side. The dark circles under her bloodshot eyes were even more pronounced than they had been before, and Gold could tell that she had not slept the past two nights since he saw her last at the diner. She left the shop without another word, stalking past him with shoulders hunched, protecting herself from whatever might be out there. Tom watched her go, then gave Gold a worried look.

“D’you think I ought to call Hopper?” he said. “When someone looks that desperate and tries to buy that many sleeping pills…”

Gold shook his head. “No. I don’t think she has any intention of doing herself harm. She just needs some sleep. Whether she’ll get it or not is a different matter.” He paid for his toothpaste and followed Belle out of the shop. It took him a little while to find her as he had no idea which direction she might have gone in, but he decided that going towards the library was probably the best idea, and sure enough, she was sitting on the bottom step of the staircase that led up to her little apartment, still curled up on herself.

“I take it you heard my little performance in the drug store,” she muttered, not looking up at him and addressing his feet and the butt of his cane.

“Yes.”

“I’m not trying to kill myself.” Her voice was hard and brittle, and it sounded as if she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.

“I didn’t think that you were. But you are desperate, and desperate people do desperate things that they might not always think through entirely. May I?”

He indicated the step beside her and Belle slid to the side to allow room for him without a word. He settled next to her, resting his cane between his knees.

“I’ve never heard of Dormex,” he said, by way of continuing the conversation.

“It’s very new. I was on the clinical trials, it’s only just been approved for mainstream release. It’s a very powerful sleeping drug, about as near as you can get to full on surgical sedation without going intravenously.” She sighed, but she still did not look at him, instead staring out into the middle distance. “When I started sleepwalking, it was suggested that I try sleeping pills to really knock me out properly so I could get a good night’s rest. Because sleep is the time when your body rests and recharges and repairs itself, but if you sleepwalk then you’re expending all your energy on being up and active whilst you’re asleep, so you don’t get the proper rest you should be getting. That was the problem I had. Of course, when I was younger I just thought it was straight up somnambulism, I didn’t realise that all the rest of the freaky stuff was happening.”

“Did it work?” Gold asked.

Belle nodded, then shook her head. “It worked for a little while. Every time I tried a new pill, it would work for about a month or two but then the sleepwalking would start again and I started getting side effects. I think that was the Dark One trying to fight against this drug that was making me so heavy and lethargic and physically unable to get up and do its bidding. So I kept getting stronger and stronger pills, larger and larger dosages until I was at the very limit of what I could take over the counter and on prescription safely. My doctor couldn’t understand how my body could be so averse to restful sleep; he said he’d never seen someone as active in their sleep as I was. That was around the time of the fifteen miles with broken glass in my feet incident. Then came Dormex. The two months of that trial, I had the best sleep I’d ever had. Before or since.”

“Why did you stop taking it?”

“The trial finished and my insurance wouldn’t cover it on prescription.” Belle let out a long sigh. “So that was the end of Dormex, and since then, nothing’s even come close to it. So in the end I stopped taking the sleepers altogether, because they just weren’t working. Now though…”

“You just want to sleep.”

“It’s more than that. I just want to sleep without fear. Unlike most other people who take part in sleeping drug trials, I don’t have insomnia. I have no trouble falling asleep. I can lay down and put my head on the pillow and I’ll be off within a few minutes. But I don’t want to fall asleep. When I stay awake it’s by choice. I haven’t slept since I woke up in your garden because I’m just so afraid of it happening again. The thing inside my head, the Dark One – it’s getting stronger, I can feel it. Perhaps because it’s now where it wants to be. All the time before, it’s focussed all its energy on trying to get north. Now it is north, and it can do whatever the next stage is.”

Gold really didn’t want to think about what that next stage might be, and he thought again of the handprint on his study window. It was probably time to come clean.

“Belle, I have to say this. That night I found you in the morning, that wasn’t the first time you’ve been to my garden in your sleep.”

She looked at him then, her gaze sharp despite her obvious wearing fatigue.

“What?”

“You came the night before as well, after our first conversation in the bar.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me? What happened?”

“Well, I didn’t know it was you. I didn’t even know that you’d been until I found a handprint on my window that had definitely not been there before.”

“God, Gold, you’re freaking me out and I’m the one who did it. How did you know that it was me?”

“Fingerprints matched.”

“You know, I’m pretty sure it’s highly unethical if not illegal to take someone’s fingerprints without their permission but I’m going to let that slide.” Belle ran a hand through her limp hair. “Wow. That’s… I don’t even know what to say. That’s scary.”

“It is a bit, yes.”

“Well, at least now you know why I won’t go back to sleep.”

“I know. But I’m not worried about your midnight excursions into my garden.” That was a lie, Gold was extremely worried about her nocturnal visits but he figured that thus far she had not actually made it into his house so he was fairly safe from whatever intentions towards him that she might have had. “I’ve had an idea.”

Belle looked at him warily. “Go on.”

“I was speaking to an old friend of mine. He lives in England but we did some work together a few years ago, back when I was still working. He’s something of a specialist in cases like yours.”

“Cases like mine? Can I meet this specialist?”

“I’m not sure that would be entirely a good idea, he’s not actively practising anymore and I don’t want you to freak out.”

“Gold, I’ve been permanently freaking out on a subconscious level ever since I was twelve and I realised that there was something very wrong with me. I am never not freaking out. I’m freaking out right now but I’m too tired to actually show it.”

Gold conceded that point.

“So who is this friend of yours and what does he do?” Belle asked. For all her fear and internal freaking out, she seemed calm and composed, and interested by what he had to say.

“His name’s Joseph Macavoy and he used to be a priest.”

“A priest? What does a priest…” She tailed off. “Good lord. Do you really think I’m being possessed by a demon?”

“I’m not sure what I think just yet,” Gold said, trying not to commit himself to anything before he’d been able to do some more research and experimentation. “I think that I’m going to have to accept that it might be a possibility, and one that I would like to prove conclusively true or false before I move onto the next hypothesis.”

In spite of it all, Belle gave a little giggle.

“From what I know of you, Mr Gold, I think only you could turn demonic possession into something so harmless and scientific sounding.”

“Thank you. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but thank you.”

“So, tell me what did Joseph have to say?”

“He advised us to communicate with whatever it is in your mind directly. Which is why I want you to sleep tonight and try to let it come to the surface.”

“How am I going to communicate with it if I’m asleep?” Belle pointed out.

“Well, it’s a fairly crude solution, but I want to try it. Right down three questions on a big sheet of paper and stick it to your bedroom door so that it’s the last thing you see before you close your eyes and the first thing that you see when you open them. With any luck, the subconscious thing should notice them and take them in, and answer them, and you might have answers when you wake up. Or if it’s feeling particularly helpful then it might write down the answers for you.”

“Or another hypnotism session,” Belle said. Her voice was ponderous, she was evidently giving the matter serious consideration. “When I sleep I don’t remember anything, but even before I blacked out in the session with Dr Hopper, I was remembering things that I wouldn’t ordinarily recall. It might bring up some kind of repressed knowledge.”

“I’m willing to try anything to get to the bottom of this if you are,” Gold said plainly. Belle nodded her agreement.

“Yes. I’m willing. What do you want me to ask myself?”

“These three things: ‘What is your name?’ ‘How old are you?’ ‘What are you looking for?’”

“Got it.” Belle stared down at their shoes again for a long time, then finally looked back at Gold. “Do you think that this is going to work?”

“I have no idea, but I think we ought to try it. If it doesn’t, then we’ll just try something else.”

Belle smiled weakly. “Thank you. For your dedication. And for, well, listening. I guess we’ll just have to see what happens tonight.”

“We shall see.”

Gold hoped that the experiment would bear fruit, and he very much hoped that he would not find Belle in his garden come the next morning. Although, he amended, if she could tell him the answers to those three questions then perhaps it would be worth it, for both of them.


	10. Chapter 10

**Ten**

Gold woke early from an uneasy dream that he forgot upon opening his eyes, but despite the eeriness of remembered nervousness, there was a certain excitement in his manner that he couldn’t deny nor properly explain. With any luck, his idea would have worked and he would have been able to get through to whatever it was that was sharing Belle’s mind, and they might have some more of an idea what they were working with. He could then feed all this information back to Joseph, who would provide them with conclusive evidence of something or other. After that, it might well be back to the drawing board, but at least they would have eliminated one line of enquiry.

The first thing that he did was to open the curtains wide, flinging them back quickly so as to startle anything that might be hiding on the other side of them. The garden was blessedly empty, with no signs of rustling in the trees heralding a dramatic appearance like Belle had made a couple of days ago. Everything looked exactly as it should, and it was a mark of how topsy turvy his life had become in the past week or so that Gold was immediately suspicious. Making his way down to the study, he opened the curtains there too, examining the glass carefully for any handprints. There were none. Nothing, no-one, had been in his garden the previous night. Or they had been there but left no trace, which was still a possibility but since it wasn’t one he could prove or disprove he was going to have to ignore it and just believe what his two eyes were telling him. He wondered whether it was too early to call on Belle and see if she had had any success with the questions and if there were any answers forthcoming. It probably was. If anything very strange had happened overnight then no doubt she would call him as soon as possible to let him know, so he just had to trust her judgement and wait a while.

He thought back to his conversation with Joseph. _Do you really think you’re dealing with possession?_ Gold honestly wasn’t sure what he was dealing with, he just knew that whatever it was, it sounded like it was volatile and powerful and he really didn’t want to mess with it if he could help himself. On the other hand, messing with it might be the only way to help Belle, and he definitely wanted to help Belle. Again he was reminded of his message to Joseph. _This is an important one_. What was it about Belle that had made her so important in his eyes? He pushed that thought to the back of his mind and returned to the matter of possible possession. If anyone knew about possessions and demonic presences it was Joseph, who had been called to investigate several during his career as a priest. Gold had not been with him for all of them, only the cases that had interested him with regard as to how they had been faked. The thought had crossed his mind that Belle was playing a long con with him in some way, but seeing how desperate she had been yesterday when she had revealed her desire to just get some sleep without fearing what she might do once her eyes were closed, he thought that her plight was genuine.

That was the problem he faced with coming at the issue from the opposite angle to his usual tack. He was so used to approaching things from a real-world point of view that he just didn’t know how to go about proving something did exist as opposed to not existing. Joseph was really the best person for the task, but after everything that he had been through, it really wasn’t fair to ask him to come over and take on Belle’s case. Still, Joseph had asked to be kept informed of what was going on, and that meant that he was obviously willing to help in some degree. When he communicated the results of his experiment, he could ask for the next stages to investigate. Maybe Joseph would get interested of his own accord. It might be just what he needed to pull him out of the funk he was in at the moment and get back into the field. It was a long shot, but it might just work, and Gold would be more than happy if it did.

The phone remained silent all morning, and Gold decided that it was probably time to call on Belle and see what had happened overnight. As he left the house, he kept a lookout for anything that might be considered somewhat unusual, any signs of supernatural activity that had gone on during the night, but everything in the town looked much the same as it always did. He could always put his nightmare down to an overstressed mind – it wasn’t like he could remember what had happened in the dream, just that he felt distinctly uneasy about the whole thing, as if there was something that he ought to remember but couldn’t.

It felt a little like a warning sign, but he could not for the life of him interpret it, so he tried to shake off the foreboding feeling. It really wouldn’t do to be getting paranoid when he was the one that Belle was relying on to keep a level head and guide her through the investigation process. He couldn’t start jumping at shadows now.

Shadows…

He looked down at his own shadow where it stretched out on the pavement in front of him in the early afternoon sun. There was absolutely nothing strange about it at all, but the thought of shadows brought him full circle to his own first experiences with the paranormal. Why was it that he had suddenly thought about the shadows? He had not seen them for years now and he had long since put them down to his imagination, but now he was really not so sure. Not now that Belle had arrived and something in her subconscious was seeking him out. Something in the back of Gold’s mind kept telling him that there was more to this than met the eye, and that somehow, he was the link that held it all together. If only he knew how a terrifying incident from his childhood could match up with the experiences of a woman born a decade and a half after his own first paranormal encounters, on the other side of the world. There were tenuous links and then there were tenuous links, but even this one seemed to beggar belief a bit.

He put it to the back of his mind as he reached the library. It was something that he would have to come back to, even if it was only to eliminate it, but for now he wanted to focus on Belle. He made his way up the steps to her flat and knocked sharply. It took her a long time to answer, but when she did, he was pleasantly surprised to see that she looked far better than she had done when he had seen her the previous day. Although still looking drawn and tired, the dark circles under her eyes had faded a little bit and there was more colour in her cheeks.

“To be honest, I’m really not sure how successful we were,” she said immediately upon seeing him, and she stepped back to invite him inside her home. It was a cosy space, not large by any manner or means, and full to the brim with books of all shapes, sizes and ages, stacked up in piles around the living room with its adjoined kitchenette.

“Tea?” Belle offered, and Gold nodded. Turning around to the front door, he saw that the questions were tacked up there in Belle’s clear, looping hand. There was no other writing on the sheet, and he wondered how successful Belle thought they had been, whether the answers to the questions were swimming around somewhere in her unconscious memory and she just couldn’t access them although she knew that they were there.

“Tea would be lovely, thank you.”

“All right, make yourself at home. I’ll get a pot on.”

Gold carefully manoeuvred himself around a pile of books and perched on the sofa, waiting for Belle. Taking a closer look around at the books, he saw that several of the topmost on the stacks were to do with paranormal investigation and ghost-hunting of various kinds, and he could see his own book there in the centre. He wondered just how much information Belle had gleaned over the years in the search for an explanation for her condition.

“So, what happened last night?” Gold asked once they were sitting together in the little lounge area with their tea.

“Well, I’m not really sure. Everything’s a bit jumbled up in my head.” Belle paused, her brow furrowing as she tried to remember the order of events. “Well, I went to sleep without any problems, and I’m feeling marginally more refreshed than I was when I went to bed.”

“That’s good,” Gold said. For all he wanted to try and communicate with the entity that was sharing her mind space, he knew how much Belle needed her sleep and he wasn’t going to be disappointed if all their experiments resulted in was her getting some shut-eye. “Anything else?”

“Well, I know that I didn’t sleep properly all the way through the night,” Belle said, her voice dry and amused. “I didn’t wander, because all the locks were still in place and the keys were exactly where I left them last night, but I did go… absent.” Since they had no concrete idea what was happening during her episodes, Belle simply chose to use the euphemisms for it that she had always used. “I know because when I ‘woke up’, I was sitting on the end of my bed staring at the door, rather than lying down somewhere.”

Gold nodded his understanding. “Go on. You said you weren’t sure if it was successful.”

“I’m not. I mean, I don’t have any answers for you, nothing clear-cut, just a vague impression. But considering that when I woke up I was looking at the questions and I hadn’t moved past them, I think that whatever it is in there, we’ve made it sit up and think by communicating with it directly like this.”

“Well, if we can keep you safe and stop you wandering by taping questions to your door then hopefully that should make your nights a little more trouble-free,” Gold said. “If it had trouble with the questions that we asked it last night we should tack up a cryptic crossword and it would be occupied for days.”

Belle laughed, a pretty, silvery giggle. “Yes, that sounds like a good idea. You never know, I might wake up one day suddenly able to solve incredibly hard crosswords. There might be assets to this thing after all.”

They joked about the prospect for a while, but when it came down to it, Gold knew that subduing the presence in Belle’s mind was not going to be enough. It was a short-term fix and it wouldn’t hold forever. Far better to get to the root of the problem now rather than to keep patching until it could be patched no longer and something catastrophic happened.

“I’ll try again tonight and see if I can get anything more concrete from it,” Belle said. “It’s strange, I’ve always thought of the Dark One as this separate entity sharing my mind, but I’ve never really thought of trying to communicate with it before. It was always just there, gnawing away at me, and I never really thought of the possibilities that there might be for actually understanding it. Don’t get me wrong, I want it out of my head as soon as possible – if it’s possible. But ascribing intelligence to it like this means that perhaps it can be reasoned with and the process wouldn’t be as much of a battle as I thought it might be.”

“That’s very true. If we can find out what it wants then there might be something we can negotiate.” Gold paused. “You said you had a vague impression.”

Belle nodded slowly. “Yes. Whatever it is, it’s very old. We’re talking millennia. I don’t know how I know that, or anything more precise than that, but when I woke up this morning I just knew that it was thousands of years old.”

“Obviously it hasn’t been with you for those thousand years,” Gold said. “Perhaps it was dormant until it found the perfect host.”

“Perhaps. Maybe come tomorrow I’ll have a name for you.”

They fell back into silence. It was a slightly awkward one, but that was in the main due to the tension that was buzzing in the air with the exciting knowledge that they had made a breakthrough. A very tiny one, but a breakthrough nonetheless, and it was one that they could hopefully exploit.

The conversation turned to books, and tea, and things completely unrelated to the task at hand, and by the time Gold got up to leave he was surprised to find that he had spent most of the afternoon in Belle’s apartment. The time had passed easily once they had moved on from their little joint mission, and as he walked home having promised to call again the next day, Gold pondered. He very much hoped that once their task had come to a conclusion, they would be able to continue to see each other like this.

He was going to have to accept that he was getting extremely fond of Belle French.


	11. Chapter 11

Gold was not expecting the phone to ring and when it did, he almost jumped out of his skin. Although it was ringing in exactly the same tone as it always did, there seemed to be an electric urgency to it this time that prickled through the air, demanding his attention immediately. He snatched up the receiver with unanticipated nervousness.

“Gold.”

_“Hi Rum. It’s Belle.”_

She sounded shaken, her voice quiet and a little wobbly, and immediately Gold was set on edge.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

_“Yes, I’m ok. We’ve had a breakthrough, I think_.”

“You think…”

_“Yeah… I can’t really make head or tail of it.”_

“Ok, we’ll cross that bridge in a minute. You sound very shaken up, are you sure you’re all right?”

_“Yes, I mean, well, I’m all right physically.”_  There was a long pause, and in that moment, Gold wasn’t at all concerned for solving the mystery surrounding Belle as long as she was all right in herself.  _“It’s just that the whole thing’s a bit unnerving. It’s one thing having this thing sharing my head but another thing actually communicating with it.”_  She paused again, and Gold could almost see her biting her lip on the other end of the phone.  _“Would you… Could you come over please? And perhaps help me process what it is that I’m seeing here before it starts freaking me out any more?”_

“Of course.” He was practically out of the door already. “I’ll be right there.”

The walk to Belle’s apartment from his was not a long one, but despite his hurried steps Gold felt like he was walking through treacle and he couldn’t get along the ground fast enough. Belle was waiting for him at the top of the stairs to her apartment, the door already open, and Gold could see that she was definitely unnerved. Her bottom lip was worrying between her teeth and she was hugging her chest tightly, a kind of unconscious protection against whatever it was that had frightened her when she had first woken up.

“What’s happened?” he asked as she closed the door behind him. The sheet of questions was still tacked up there with no visible changes, and Belle indicated for him to follow her through to her bedroom.

“It woke up again last night,” she said. “I came to on the kitchen floor, so I knew that it hadn’t been stopped in its tracks by the questions on my bedroom door, but at least I hadn’t wandered too far. Then I came back in here and well, you can see for yourself.”

The sheet of questions on the back of Belle’s bedroom door was covered in pencil scrawls. The writing was recognisable as Belle’s own, but only barely, the letters were spiky and half-complete, as if it had taken a lot of effort for her to write them. Perhaps because she was being controlled by an entity that was not used to performing such delicate tasks as writing?

“I don’t remember writing any of that,” Belle said. “And none of it makes any sense to me at all. Last time, I got the impression that this thing was very old, and what it’s saying seems to corroborate that, but I still can’t make sense of what it’s trying to tell me.”

At first glance, the scrawlings around the edge of the paper were pure gibberish; perhaps the entity was trying to get to grips with using a pencil and was practising before it actually put down any answers. Beneath the questions were coherent words, but for all they made sense, they might as well have been another language. Gold sat down heavily on the end of the bed beside Belle as he read.

_What is your name?_

_I have had many but none are my own._

_How old are you?_

_I have no age I have always been here._

_What are you looking for?_

_The bloodline was broken I need the connection I NEED THE CONNECTION this is a mistake I NEED THE CONNECTION._

After that, everything just became scrawl again until one word that was written so heavily that the point of the pencil had gone through the paper at one point.

_NIMUE_

It was chilling to look at, and Gold could quite see why Belle had been so unnerved by it. He made the executive decision to remove the sheet from the door, quickly untacking it and taking it through to the kitchen, laying it out on the table. The simple act of having it horizontal rather than vertical helped to make it seem less scary, and as Belle set about making tea for them both, he sat down at the table and tried to make some sense of the scrawls. The unintelligible scribbles meant nothing to him, but that might just be because they were in a different language or a different script. He’d come into contact with people sprouting various brands of gobbledegook in his time, but the fact that there was plain English mixed in with it gave it a much more sinister feel.

He grabbed his phone and took some pictures of the sheet with the intention of sending them to Joseph later. If anyone in Gold’s acquaintance could make sense of these, it would probably be him, and Joseph had asked to be kept in the loop, after all.

“So, what do you think?”

Belle brought their tea over and sat beside him, and Gold traced his fingertip over the word at the bottom of the sheet, the one that the entity had obviously wanted the reader to pay the most attention to.

“Nimue. That’s got to have some significance.”

“In Arthurian legend, Nimue was Merlin’s apprentice and lover,” Belle said. “Some interpretations have her as the Lady of the Lake, protector of Excalibur as well. Most versions cast her as a villain, enchanting Merlin and trapping him in a cave. Or a tree.” She paused. “Maybe I’ve got Merlin in my head, and this is him trying desperately to get a message out.”

“Perhaps,” Gold said. At this stage he wasn’t going to rule out anything. “But then surely the answer to the question ‘what is your name?’ would be ‘Merlin’, rather than this cryptic spiel.”

“True.” Belle sat back. “I don’t know. None of it’s making any sense. When I woke up and saw it, I thought that perhaps we’d had a breakthrough and it could help us, but now I’m not so sure. It seems to have thrown up more questions than answers.” She looked down at the sheet and gave a shiver; Gold hastily folded it up so that they didn’t have to look at it any longer. Out of sight, out of mind, although it was clear that neither of them were going to forget what they had seen for a long while yet. Hopefully Joseph had some inside knowledge that might help them. In the meantime, perhaps brushing up on his Arthurian legends and stories wasn’t too bad an idea.

The shrill sound of the doorbell cut through the tense atmosphere, making both of them jump, and Belle giggled when she saw that he had been just as disturbed by the completely innocuous sound as she had. She went over to get the door and Gold heard her exclaim with happiness and gratitude. She was smiling when she returned carrying the package that she had signed for, but he couldn’t help noticing that there was a touch of steel in her expression; the smile was a determined one, but not necessarily one of happiness.

“Something you’ve been expecting?” he asked.

“Yes.” She wasted no time in ripping open the package, and since she was making no effort to be furtive about it, Gold leaned over to see what was inside. It was a box full of small home CCTV cameras. He raised an eyebrow.

“I’m assuming there’s an explanation for this?”

“When I first started having episodes, my dad installed some cameras in the house to catch what I was doing when I was sleepwalking,” Belle said. “It was to try and keep me safe more than anything, and it was interesting to try and pick up patterns in what I did and where I went when I wasn’t myself. In the end, though, they didn’t really help; it wasn’t like they could stop me from leaving the house or doing other random things, and they don’t record sound, so if I was muttering anything that might have had any significance, then it was lost. So in the end, we stopped using them. It was a bit creepy being watched all the time, at any rate.”

She picked up one of the little cameras and turned it over in her hands, looking for the on switch and all the settings. “Now though, since I’ve come here and everything’s suddenly been dialled up to eleven, I think I want to see for myself what happens when I’m asleep. Perhaps they could have been useful last night, to see what was going on when I was writing all of that.”

Gold nodded, it was a good idea and he didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of something similar in terms of surveillance. Despite all the stigma surrounding found footage horror films, cameras, especially night vision and heat-sensitive, were a staple in any paranormal investigator’s toolkit, whether they were looking to prove or disprove the existence of spirits in unoccupied places.

“I should probably get these set up as soon as I can,” Belle said. “I mean, it’s normally when I’m asleep that things happen, but I have been known to drop out in the middle of the day before. And since the episodes are happening more frequently now, I want to be on my guard.”

“Yes, I’ll let you get on with that.” Gold drained his tea and looked again at the folded paper. “Do you want to keep that?”

Belle shook her head. “Not really, it creeps me out just looking at it. If I can’t make any sense of it now then I don’t think that staring at it for any length of time is going to help. Most of it’s imprinted indelibly on my brain anyway; but if I have any flashes of inspiration then I know where to come.”

Gold slipped the paper into his jacket pocket without another word, and they said their farewells, making plans to meet up for coffee the next day. No mention was made of them making some kind of progress report when they met; it was an unspoken surety that unless something incredibly strange happened overnight then their next meeting would be thoroughly devoid of paranormal discussion. As much as Gold wanted to get to the bottom of this mystery, and as much as he knew that Belle wanted the same, even more so than he did, he knew that to immerse her in that world constantly was probably not going to have the desired effect. Gold knew all too well the way that he could get lost in his work, and perhaps they both needed a reminder that there was a good life out there that awaited them once all this suspense was over. It still felt strange to think of them as dating, considering how their acquaintance had begun, and Gold wasn’t quite sure where they stood in terms of their relationship. The sooner they could sort out the elephant in the room and have some hope of a normal courtship, the better.

He fingered the paper in his pocket as he made his way back to his own home, thinking about all the things that he had encountered over his career and whether any of them could be applied in this situation, finally giving it up as a bad job and accepting that he was going to need help. It wasn’t too late to call Joseph over in England, and he settled himself in his study, spreading the paper out on his desk and emailing the photographs of it over to his friend. The word  _NIMUE_  still stood out at him, mocking him almost, daring him to try and make some sense of its inclusion on the page, and he spent the next few minutes looking through various online articles trying to get a picture of the woman behind the name. Still nothing that could link her to Belle’s current plight, and it was research that could be done later.

He set his computer to snooze and dialled Joseph’s number.

_“Hello?”_

“Joseph, it’s Rum Gold. We’ve had some developments in the case.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve**

Joseph would admit that he was surprised to be hearing from Gold so soon after their first conversation in many years, but if he was being brutally honest with himself, then he was more surprised with how interested he was in the conversation. After that first call from Gold a few days ago, he had tried to put the matter to the back of his mind, reasoning that he had left that part of his life behind him a long time ago, and there was no way that getting involved in it again could bring anything but disaster. He had tried to shove the old demonology book back in at the bottom of the pile of paperwork that he had found it under, but it was clear that it was not going to go back in without a fight, so it had remained sitting innocuously on his kitchen table, mocking him almost with its presence and daring him to open its musty old pages and take a look inside, to try and investigate the phenomenon that his old friend was dealing with. Thus far, Joseph had managed to resist its call. Over the course of his career in the priesthood, Joseph had become used to resisting temptations of all kinds, and this one was no different, really.

Despite his determination not to get involved with whatever mystery it was that had hooked Gold, when he picked up the phone, recognising the overseas number, he felt the vaguest memory of a frisson of excitement. Investigating these phenomena had been his calling back when he had worn the dog collar; it was a part of his work that he had enjoyed for the most part, no matter what weird and wonderful circumstances it had led him into. Until that particular incident, of course, which had been enough to dampen anyone’s ardour for the paranormal.

“Hello?”

_“Joseph, it’s Rum Gold, we’ve had some developments in the case.”_

It could almost have been like it was back in the old days when they had been working together. Gold had always been perfunctory, never bothering with the pleasantries of the job and always leaving that part to Joseph. Of the two of them, Gold reasoned, he was the one that was better at dealing with things, and Joseph was the one who was better at dealing with people – both of the possessed and the unpossessed variety. In a twisted way, it amused Joseph to think that Gold was now handling all the aspects of this investigation on his own, including dealing with a possibly possessed person.

His train of thought came full circle and he shuddered. That was not something that he would wish on anyone, as funny as it might be to see the ever-cynical and disbelieving Gold being forced to confront something so far out of his understanding that it left him speechless. No-one’s life was worth that.

“What’s happened?” he asked, intrigued and ready for the answer even in spite of himself. “Did you take me up on my suggestion?”

_“Yes. We asked the… thing… some direct questions. We’re just not all that sure what to make of the answers. I was hoping that you might be able to shed some light on the case.”_

Joseph hesitated. If he said yes, then it would be to irrevocably commit himself to the investigation and plunge back into the world that he had sworn he would not return to after it had turned on him so spectacularly. He could not afford to get involved, for his own sanity if nothing else. Instinct was telling him to say no, to tell Gold that he was on his own with this one, but even as he thought those very words, he could tell that his conviction was wavering. He had been intrigued enough in the very beginning to ask Gold to keep him in the loop, so in effect he had already committed to the case then. He desperately did not want there to be another victim of some malevolent, uncontrollable entity, and Gold was giving him the power to prevent tragedy, or at least help to.

If he wasn’t directly involved, then there could be no harm in it, Joseph reasoned. He was here on the other side of the world to what was happening, acting in a consulting capacity only. It would be Gold who would be doing all the legwork, so there was really no need for Joseph to fear returning to the world. If he was being used purely for his knowledge, then that was something that Joseph could definitely live with. That was safe. There was a reason why he had never cut off his ties with the church and the paranormal investigations completely. As easy as it would have been for him to simply burn all those papers and books stacked up in the corner of his bedroom and make a clean break of it, something had always stopped him. A large part of Joseph had always been convinced that it was his way of punishing himself for all the things that had gone wrong, to keep the reminders there constantly haunting him every night, rather than wiping the slate clean and allowing himself to move on from the memories. Maybe it was time to come clean and accept that something inside him had kept all these notes and theories because he knew that the day would come when he would need them again, and he would be unable to resist that siren call.

“I’m listening,” he told Gold.

_“Great. I’ve emailed you what we’ve got.”_

Joseph went over to his ancient laptop and waited for it to load, and his gaze flickered to the top shelf of his liquor cabinet. He felt no desire to open the cupboard, and he realised that over the last couple of days, he had not got through nearly as much whisky as he had been expecting. Maybe this case was just what he needed to get back on the wagon. It was as good a purpose in life as any, and confronting his sorrows head on would be infinitely healthier than drowning them in the bottle.

“So, I take it you’ve spoken to the entity again?”

_“No, we left it written messages and it replied.”_

Joseph shuddered again. In a way, that was even more creepy than talking to something that you were not quite sure what it was. Handwriting could be extremely unnerving when it wanted to be. When the image that Gold had sent him was finally loading on his screen, his theory was proven correct. The scrawlings there would be enough to send a trickle of ice down the most stoic man’s spine. He took a moment to take in the more legible parts of the message; he could hear Gold’s impatient breathing on the other end of the phone but he ignored it, wanting to be sure of what he was looking at.

_“Neither Belle nor I can make head nor tail of it,”_ Gold said eventually. _“A mysterious entity that’s been here since… the dawn of time, I guess, that has no name, that needs a connection to something. And it’s something to do with Nimue.”_

On the face of it, Joseph couldn’t make sense of it either. It didn’t fall into any of the firmly established patterns of demonic possession that he had encountered and researched over the years, although for Belle, that was probably a good thing.

“Nimue’s a figure from myth and legend, not anything to do with the demonic pantheon,” Joseph said. “It’s probably an allegory.”

_“We did consider that,”_ Gold said, his voice dry. _“We were wondering about the possibility of Nimue having trapped Merlin in Belle’s brain.”_

“Well, it may sound ridiculous, but stranger things have happened,” Joseph said. “What I’m more interested in is what it says about the connection, and a bloodline being broken.”

_“Do these kinds of things run in families?”_

“It wouldn’t be unheard of. I would have thought that would have been something you’d look into from your more cynical standpoint, though, Gold. Bloodlines imply genetics. Things like this can lie dormant for several generations. Maybe someone in Belle’s ancestry holds the key.”

_“I hadn’t thought of that, you’re right. It’s definitely something to consider.”_

Joseph smiled privately at the thought. Gold was usually so methodical when it came to his investigations and his going for the least logical and most unlikely explanation first, that of something actually being paranormal, instead of his usual approach of trying his utmost to prove that it wasn’t, was very telling. Joseph may never have met the mysterious Belle, but he got the impression that she had left a very deep mark on Gold already.

He looked again at the scribblings that did not form any kind of coherent English words. He could see at a glance that they were also not in Latin, which was a favoured language of religious phenomena, and they were not in backwards Latin, which was sometimes a hallmark of people trying to emulate anti-religious phenomena. Still, he’d seen and heard many a strange thing in his time, and he had the leisure to try and work out what these things were at another time. He returned to the answer to that third question.

_The bloodline was broken I need the connection I NEED THE CONNECTION this is a mistake I NEED THE CONNECTION._

He blinked, and it was obvious now.

“It’s not Belle’s bloodline.”

_“Pardon?”_

“There’s no use in looking for any kinds of similar symptoms in Belle’s family,” Joseph explained. “It’s not her bloodline that the entity is talking about, it can’t be. It says that the bloodline has been broken. If it was talking about Belle’s bloodline then it wouldn’t be broken because it would have handed down to Belle as it should.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone, and Joseph just about made out the soft cursing.

“Gold? Are you all right?”

_“You’re right, it’s not Belle’s bloodline,”_ Gold said, and for the first time in their acquaintance, Joseph thought that he could detect genuine fear of the unknown in Gold’s voice. _“I think it’s mine.”_

It took Joseph a moment to let that sink in.

“Pardon?” he asked eventually, trying not to sound like he was just as affected by this sudden revelation as Gold was.

_“It keeps talking about a connection. I told you about the first time I spoke to this entity, when Belle was under hypnosis. It talked about a connection then. It was searching for a connection. Belle has always been pulled north looking for something, and now she’s here, in the north, still looking for a connection. One that keeps drawing her to me.”_

On the one hand, it sounded so absurd as to be laughable. On the other hand, there was far too much coincidence at work. On yet another hand, Joseph had to wonder at precisely what was going on over there in Maine for something like this to have shaken Gold’s unflinching cynicism to the point where he was thinking along these lines. This was either something completely beyond both of their ken, or else Belle was playing a very long and detailed con on Gold.

Something told Joseph that it was more likely to be the former.

“Well, you know what to do then,” he said, although he could tell that his attempt at putting a brave face on it was failing miserably. “Look up your family tree and see if anyone ever reported symptoms similar to Belle’s.”

_“Hmm.”_

Joseph could fully understand Gold’s scepticism. All things considered, it was likely that any member of Gold’s family who had ever been thought to be possessed by some kind of entity, malevolent or not, would not have survived very long and would have been executed as a heretic or locked away in an institution, depending on the time period. All the same, he couldn’t think of anything else to suggest that Gold could do to shed any further light on the mystery. Gold’s knowledge was vast and detailed, but there were some areas where Joseph had centuries of the Vatican’s research and teachings on hand to help him, things that Gold simply could not boast. This time, their roles would be by necessity reversed, with Gold having to deal with the people and Joseph having to deal with the theory.

“I’ll see what I can make of all the rest of the markings on the paper,” Joseph assured him. “I’m sure that I’ll be able to find something.” The more he looked at some of the pencil scratch, the more it seemed to be forming itself into patterns, even if they were not comprehensible. There was definitely more to the message, although it would take a lot of brainpower to figure it out, perhaps more than Joseph was able to expend at that point in time. It occurred to him that he had made this bald statement without any further consideration; he was a part of his investigation now whether he liked it or not, and the part of his brain that just wanted to sink deeper and deeper into a welcoming whisky embrace was practically begging him to pull away, and not get involved.

It was too late. As they ended the call, Joseph’s mind was already trawling through his paperwork, working out what he would need and where in all the cavernous reams of past research he could find it, and the part of him crying out for alcohol seemed to quieten, if only for a moment.

In a very strange kind of way, Joseph wondered if this new investigation might be good for him.


	13. Chapter 13

Sitting in the diner waiting for Belle, Gold stared down at his phone, willing it to give him the answers that his brain could not. All he needed was some kind of sign, some kind of outside intervention that would tell him what to do. The truth was that he was desperate, but he really didn’t want anyone to know that he was desperate. In all his long career of investigating these types of cases, he had never come across one quite as baffling as Belle’s was, and he had never felt so helpless to assist.

He knew why it was bothering him, of course. He was going to have to admit that his feelings for the haunted little librarian went far deeper than the professional curiosity she had presented to him at first. No, he was in far too deep now, and he wanted to do the best that he could for her because he liked her. A lot. And for some unfathomable reason, she seemed to like him too. A small, rather cynical part of Gold kept telling him that the only reason she liked him was because the thing that was sharing her brain had an uncanny obsession with him for reasons as yet unknown, and that perhaps once she was successfully separated from the entity, her feelings for him would melt away into the ether, as if they had never existed. Gold shook that thought away from her head. Whilst she was lucid and compos mentis, Belle was in control of her own thoughts, feelings and desires, and if those thoughts, feelings and desires included him, then he would have to believe that they were genuine. The thought of them not being, through no conscious manipulation on Belle’s part, was a chilling one.

“Hey.”

Her voice pulled him out of his dismal reverie as she took a seat in the booth opposite him. She looked brighter than she had done for days, and the dark circles under her eyes were less pronounced than before.

“Hey. Any luck with your cameras?”

Belle made a face and shook her head. “No. As luck would have it, these past few days have been completely uneventful. In a way it’s annoying because it’s Murphy’s law that as soon as we start to make breakthroughs and we think we’re getting somewhere, this whatever it is decides to go dormant and not bother me, but at the same time, I’m just glad of the restful sleep whenever I can get it. What about you? Has your priest friend decided whether I’m possessed or not?”

Her tone was teasing, and although it was nice to see her in a happier mood than he had ever seen her before, the thought of Belle actually being possessed by something still made him shiver. He shook his head, trying to cover his unease.

“No, I haven’t heard anything back from him yet but I’m sure that he’ll let us know as soon as he finds anything useful. He’s not actually a priest anymore, though.”

“You know, he gets more and more intriguing every time you mention him.” Belle bit her bottom lip, her eyes still smiling. “Maybe he ought to come out here and see these things first hand, then he’d have a better idea of what he’s dealing with. And you’d be in the same time zone, rather than ringing him up in the middle of the night all the time.”

“True. I don’t think he’d appreciate getting pulled into the middle of it all though.” Gold thought about Joseph and the rut that he had gotten into since being kicked out of the priesthood. As much as he really needed the other man’s help, he would fear for his friend’s mental state if he were to actually come to the front line of this strange little battle against a vicious unknown.

Ruby came over to take their orders and then left them alone; she seemed to have become used to the idea of seeing them together. Belle had probably proved in the interim that she was able to hold her own and she really didn’t care what the rest of the town thought of her. In the moments when she was not worried about the entity sharing her mind, like now, she certainly looked like she could be a force of nature.

“Rum.” The smile on her face had faded a little into a thoughtful, serious expression. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course. Go ahead.”

“What got you into the supernatural?” she asked. “I know how you got into the debunking business, you told me that you’d become so cynical because there were so many fakes around, but what was it that got you interested in investigating these phenomena in the first place? Was it just an academic interest, or was there something… deeper?”

She wasn’t just making small talk. She genuinely wanted to know, and Gold knew that for whatever reason, the answer was important to her. It was already becoming clear that their lives were connected by something much bigger than themselves, and the thing sharing Belle’s mind needed that connection and appeared to be actively pursuing it. Maybe she just wanted to gain an insight into his mind, to get closer to him, or maybe she had a theory that she was working on. Either way, although he considered fobbing her off with a diluted version of the facts, about having had an interest in these things from childhood thanks to his aunts, he knew that she deserved the full truth.

“I had a few strange and inexplicable encounters as a child,” he said. “Probably nothing like your own, but enough to frighten and intrigue me into wanting an explanation. Any explanation, not necessarily a rational one.”

Belle nodded. “I know that feeling.”

“Over time I’ve tried to put the experience to the back of my mind, tell myself it was just my overactive child’s imagination, but it’s never really left me.”

“What happened?”

“There was a shadow,” Gold said. “It first started coming just after I moved in with my aunts. The first time I saw it, I didn’t really think anything of it. It was just a shadow at my window. I was young and my aunts were Wiccan; these things were par for the course in my mind. It didn’t scare me that first time. The second time it came though, it was different. I don’t think I’ve ever been so terrified, before or since.” He tailed off, giving a scoff of harsh laughter. “You probably think I’m silly, one of the leading authorities on telling people that the supernatural absolutely does not exist, and here I am scared of shadows on the window.”

Belle just raised an eyebrow.

“Rum, consider who you’re talking to. I think I’m the last person who’s going to judge you for weird and wonderful goings on that you can’t explain.”

“I know that. It’s just that I’ve never really told this tale to anyone since my aunts when I was four.”

“It’s obviously an important part of your life though, for you to have remembered it and it to have remained so clear on your memory ever since.”

“I guess so.” Gold shrugged. “That’s the story.”

“Did you ever get to the bottom of it?” Belle asked.

“No. To this day I don’t know what it was. My aunts didn’t know either. They just told me that whatever it was, it couldn’t get through the circle of light around the house and I didn’t need to worry. I was safe. I never felt safe, though. It used to watch me with those blank yellow eyes, as if it was waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike.”

“When did it stop?”

“I’m not sure. It must have been when I was about seven, I can’t remember seeing it since then. It was…”

A sudden connection fired in Gold’s brain and he didn’t know why he hadn’t thought about it before. He supposed that he had never had reason to, not until that conversation with Joseph that had made Belle’s entity’s intentions a little clearer.

“It was?” Belle prompted.

“Now that I think about it, I stopped seeing it at around the same time my father died. I supposed it didn’t really register at the time because I hadn’t seen him since he dropped me off with my aunts, the fact he was dead didn’t mean as much as it might have done.”

Belle was silent for a long time, her brow furrowed as she took it all in.

“So you started seeing this shadow after your father left you, and you stopped when you found out that he had died.”

“Yes…” Now that the connections had started, they were coming thick and fast. “With my usual cynical hat on, I’d say that perhaps I was imagining the whole thing to try and reforge a connection with the father who vanished out of my life, like kids who create imaginary friends to make up for losses in their lives. I’d have said that it was purely psychological.”

“But surely, if you were yearning for some kind of substitute father, such a substitute wouldn’t put so much fear in you.”

“One would certainly think so. I don’t remember much about my father, it’s been almost half a century.”

Their food arrived at that moment, and Gold was glad of the distraction from his spiralling train of thought. Ever since Joseph had mentioned looking into Belle’s family to see if any of them had shown any symptoms similar to Belle’s and then realising that it was probably his own family he needed to look into, he had been wondering where he could get that kind of information. He had no living relatives, and most of what his aunts had told him about the family had never been written down.

“Thank you,” Belle said presently, and Gold had been so caught up in his own thoughts that he was thrown by her sudden gratitude.

“What for?”

“Sharing your story with me. You said you hadn’t really shared it with anyone before, and we don’t really know each other all that well. So thank you for trusting me with something that’s such a secret part of you.”

Gold smiled. “I do trust you. And after everything that you’ve gone through and that we’re going to go through together whilst we work out what on earth might be happening here, I think you deserve the truth. You’ve trusted me with some of your most intimate thoughts, after all.”

A light blush was rising in Belle’s cheeks and Gold could not help but notice how incredibly pretty it was on her.

“Well, I do trust you too. You’re trying to help me, which is better than some of the other friends I’ve had in the past who just thought I was crazy. Or doing it for attention. Or both.”

“I don’t think you’re either of those things,” Gold assured her.

“Thank you, Rum. It really does mean a lot.”

They didn’t talk any more about the supernatural experiences in their lives, limiting their conversation to the mundane and everyday, and Gold didn’t want it to end. Sadly, their time together had to come to an end at some point, and as they walked down through the town towards the library in a friendly silence, Gold was lost in thought about what his next steps should be. Having possibly made the connection between the shadow and his father, he was determined to find out as much as he could about the man who had been such a small and insignificant part of his life. At the same time, he knew that he really ought to be focussing on Belle and her predicament, rather than delving into something in his own past that he had long since buried.

All the same… Something in the back of his mind kept telling him that there was a link between them, somewhere, and it was up to him to try and find out what it was.

“Well, this is me.” Belle had stopped outside the library, and she was looking up at him with a touch of expectation. Gold swallowed hard. He’d never really been all that good around women at the best of times, and certainly not when he was attracted to them. Thankfully, Belle seemed content to take matters into her own hands, going up on her toes to press her lips briefly against his cheek.

“Thank you for lunch, Rum.”

“You’re very welcome. Any time. Really.” God, he was blathering like an idiot now. “I’m, erm, I… You kissed me.”

Belle smiled. “I did.”

“Can I kiss you back?”

“By all means.”

What had been intended as a peck on the cheek turned into a meeting of lips, Belle’s warm and soft against his dry ones. She felt like heaven on earth, he never wanted to let go, and Gold knew that he was in way too deep to get out now.


	14. Chapter 14

**Fourteen**

Gold had thrown out most of his aunts’ belongings over the years, keeping just a few items of sentimental value and things that he thought might be useful. As he crawled under the bed in the spare bedroom where the boxes labelled ‘Aunt Elvira’ and ‘Aunt Miriam’ were stored, he only hoped that he had kept the right things. Their spell journals were still out on his nightstand, opened at the Circle of Light, but there was nothing in there of any practical use for what he needed to find out. It was becoming ever clearer to him that he needed to dig into his own past before he could help Belle figure out what was going on in her own present.

He knew comparatively little about his father; Malcolm Gold had been something of a forbidden topic in the household ever since he had upped and left his only son without viable explanation. The only people who could tell him anything, his aunts, were long since gone, and Gold had never known his mother. She’d died in childbirth, according to Aunt Miriam, but now that all these revelations and connections were coming to light, Gold wasn’t quite so sure about anything anymore.

He hauled out Aunt Miriam’s box and flicked through the notebooks and papers therein. His aunts could not help him out, but for all their lives had been solitary, they’d had friends and acquaintances. Perhaps they could tell him more about his family.

Finally he found what he was looking for, Aunt Miriam’s address book. A lot of the names had been crossed out, with little notes against them. Over half of the contacts in there were dead, but Gold’s eyes were drawn to one name with a clean blue line of fountain pen ink ruled through it. _Madeleine De Ville_.

Maddie De Ville had been one of the more prominent figures in Gold’s distant youth, and although she had long since passed on, her daughter was still very much in the picture. Gold’s friendship with Carella De Ville had had many ups and downs over the years, and he wasn’t quite sure where they stood at the moment. They hadn’t spoken for a long time, certainly not since Gold had quit the business. Carella’s own relationship with the supernatural had always been a strange one as well, never quite as immersed in it as her mother, living an adult life that could only be described as non-magical, but still a firm believer with a hand in the paranormal.

Gold shoved the box back under the bed and got back to his feet with difficulty. He really didn’t like how much he was having to rely on his cane these days. Perhaps there was going to be a change in the weather soon and that was what was causing his joints to ache so much. He really didn’t want to think of any kind of other alternative explanation so he convinced himself that he was just getting old and creaky, and left it at that. Taking Miriam’s address book down to his study, he flicked through his own contact books, finding the ‘Personal’ section. Carella De Ville had been living in Boston with her girlfriend when Gold had last had contact with her, and he hoped that she had not moved on or changed her number in the intervening years. He dialled cautiously, almost hanging up about three times before finally going through with it. Of all the people who could help him, Maddie De Ville had been the closest to his aunts and the most likely to be able to help, and in her absence, her daughter would hopefully have inherited some of her knowledge.

_“Carella De Ville.”_

Gold was so surprised that his gambit had paid off that he couldn’t speak for a few moments.

_“Hello? Is there anyone there? Can you hear me?”_

“Ella, it’s Rum Gold.”

This time there was silence on the other end of the line.

_“Rum Gold. Well, yours is a voice I haven’t heard in a while. What are you up to? Still continuing on your futile quest to disprove the existence of the supernatural?”_ For all her words might be disapproving, she sounded bright and, Gold dared to think, pleased to hear from him.

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I’ve come across something very strange and it’s opened up a whole can of worms.”

_“He believes at last!”_ Ella cried, and Gold could hear laughter in the background. _“The prodigal son returns to his roots after denying them for so long.”_

“Yes, well, something’s happened to shake my conviction. Is that Ursula there with you?”

_“Of course, darling, who else is it going to be? I would have sent you an invitation to the wedding but I don’t know where you’re living now. Someone said you’d moved to the arse end of nowhere in Maine, but I didn’t believe them. You couldn’t wait to get out of the sticks when you were younger. You loved it in New York.”_

“Yes, well, we all need a change sometimes. I take it you’re still in Boston?”

_“It’s an old house full of presence, Rum, I could never leave it.”_

“You’re a fashion magazine editor, Ella, you shouldn’t believe in all that stuff,” Gold grumbled.

_“Everyone needs a hobby, darling. The moment you turn your hobby into a job, that’s when you lose your passion for it. You should know that better than anyone.”_

She did have a point, but Gold wasn’t about to let her know that.

_“Anyway, what can I do you for? I like to think I know you well enough that you wouldn’t just seek me out after all this time for a social call. You always had an agenda, even back when we were kids stealing Mother’s incense.”_

Gold sighed. “I have a new case.”

_“Really? I thought that you’d retired.”_

“I had. But this one turned up in my back garden, literally, and I’ve got to see it through to the end.”

_“Really? Well, this does sound interesting. Tell me everything.”_

Gold knew Ella well enough to know when she was genuinely interested, and she was definitely interested now. All the same, he didn’t want to spread the details of his and Belle’s peculiar predicament too far. He needed help, but with the details of the case being so close to home, he wasn’t sure how much detail he should divulge. He’d already dragged Joseph into the mess, but at least he was on the other side of the Atlantic and fairly safe. He had no idea how volatile the entity sharing Belle’s mind was and he didn’t want to bring anyone else too far into the firing line if he could help it.

“I think it has something to do with my father,” he said eventually. “And I was hoping that you could shed some light on the man.”

_“I never met him, Rum, I don’t know what you’re asking me for.”_

“I know, but your mother knew my family quite well and I was hoping she might have left some clues behind.”

Ella was silent for a long time, then let out a long breath that whistled down the phone.

_“I’ll see what I can pull out of the attic,”_ she said. _“Can you give me any clues as to what you’re looking for?”_

“Any history of mental illness in the family, really.” Gold didn’t really want to think about what would have happened to Belle if she had been born into an age that took a much less compassionate approach to such maladies. “Particularly sleepwalking.”

_“Right.”_ Ella didn’t sound entirely convinced. _“Well, I can’t promise anything, but looking through Mother’s old diaries is always fun.”_ She paused. _“There’s something you’re not telling me. Is there anything that you might want to use my own particular talents for? I’d be most disappointed if you called me up after all this time just to use me for my familial gossip.”_

Gold pondered her offer. Ella styled herself as a fortune teller, reading palms and tarot cards. He’d never looked too far into her hobby because she never charged for it and therefore there was no monetary fraud involved. It was just a little bit of fun between her and her friends, and he’d never taken much interest in whether or not her predictions came true. He was sure that a lot of her talent came from the fact that she was incredibly observant and could usually tell a lot about people from their facial expressions and the way they carried themselves. She could have been an excellent addition to any law enforcement agency, but had decided to follow her interests into fashion instead.

Maybe she could give him some insights into Belle that he had seen for himself.

“There’s a young woman,” Gold said eventually.

_“Good god, Rum, are you in love? I’m afraid that’s one of the fundamental rules of magic you know. You can’t make someone fall in love with you.”_

“I am not in love, and I have no desire to make her fall in love with me. I just want to help her.”

_“All right. I take it that this has something to do with your sudden desire to find out if your father was a sleepwalker, and the case that literally landed in your back garden.”_

“Yes.”

_“All right, I won’t read too much into it, but I’ve got nothing doing for the next couple of weekends if you want to bring her down to Boston. A change of scenery might clear your head.”_

“I’ll run it by her.” On the face of it, it was an incredibly ridiculous idea, taking Belle to Boston to see a palm reader, but he had already said that he was trying to eliminate as many roads as possible, and Ella was certainly the only person that he would trust to take him down this particular road. Besides, he needed to visit her anyway for his own research.

_“Anything else you can tell me about this young woman you’re not in love with?”_

Gold took a deep breath.

“Joseph thinks that she’s possessed.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

“Ella? Ella? Are you still there?”

_“Yes, yes, I’m still here. That’s not the kind of thing you just drop into conversation casually, Rum! Oh god, what the hell am I going to do with you? Never mind. I’ll get going on dredging up your family’s dirty laundry and you let me know when you’re bringing your possessed girlfriend to see me.”_

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Gold protested, although thinking about it, she was certainly getting there. They’d been on what could be classed as a couple of lunch dates, and they’d kissed in the street outside her apartment.

_“Hmm.”_ Ella did not sound convinced. _“Well, despite the fact you may have just unleashed the apocalypse on the east coast, it’s nice to hear from you again. And nice to hear that something might finally have broken your stubborn scepticism.”_

“Yeah…” Gold’s worldview was certainly being shaken up by his current investigation. He could only hope that Ella and Joseph might be able to shed some light on the situation before he got too unnerved. “Well, thank you for your help.”

_“Don’t thank me just yet, I haven’t done anything. I might not be able to find anything useful, but Mother was always one for hoarding. There might be something up there. Good luck with Joseph and the demons.”_

Gold snorted. “Bye, Ella.”

_“Goodbye, Rum. Don’t be a stranger.”_

He hung up and wandered over to his computer. A tab was flashing at the bottom showing an incoming text message over Skype. It was from Joseph, which was rather disturbing since it was the middle of the night over in England.

_Rum, I’ve worked out one of the languages that Belle’s entity was writing in. You’re never going to believe this._

_Try me,_ Rum replied, and he waited for Joseph’s reply. The man seemed to be taking an awfully long time to type, but then again, Joseph had never been one of the most technologically savvy people in the world and it was two in the morning for him.

_Scots Gaelic. And not the type that’s spoken now. This looks like it dates back almost two thousand years. No wonder I didn’t recognise it._

Gold just blinked at the screen. He really didn’t need any further proof that Belle’s entity was connected to his family.

_What does it say?_

_Still figuring that out,_ Joseph replied. _There aren’t exactly any 5th century Scots Gaelic speakers around I can ask to translate for me. I’ve got one word so far, which is ‘dark’._

Gold snorted. That wasn’t ominous at all.

_There are other languages in there as well, haven’t identified those yet. I think I’ll probably have to go even older. The thing says it’s been there forever, after all…_

Gold pushed back from his desk, staring at the screen and wondering what on earth to say in response. Everything was picking up speed, their investigations were beginning to bear fruit and take direction.

And he was utterly terrified.

 


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW for this chapter: alcoholism

**Fifteen**

_I am the dark._

Sitting on the floor of his living room, surrounded by pretty much every book he owned and every single notebook he had ever written in, his computer sitting on a chair beside him, Joseph looked at the enlarged print-out of Belle’s question sheet that he had made and sighed. The sheet was now covered in post-its and bits of sticky-tape where he had been trying to translate all words that made no sense, and he had finally made a breakthrough. Unfortunately, it was not a very encouraging breakthrough.

Having identified one of the languages that the entity was using to communicate as 5th century Scots Gaelic, he had got to work on translating it and researching what other languages were in use around the world during the same time period and before; languages that were not Latin, because he would have been able to identify that. Hebrew and Aramaic had turned up nothing, so at least he could work by a process of elimination if nothing else.

He had, however, managed to translate the Scots Gaelic with the help of a few forums of contemporary Scots Gaelic speakers and the theses of various academics who’d studied the evolution of the language.

_I am the dark._

That was exactly what he wanted to see, a nice happy message. He knew that he was never going to translate it and find that the entity was completely benign and just wanted a cup of tea, or something similarly mundane, but that was really rather ominous.

He scanned over the paper, studying each of the squiggles of gibberish for anything similar. For a moment he wondered if the words looked so strange because the entity was attempting to write down words from languages that either had no written alphabet, or was transcribing words from languages with a non-latin alphabet into letters that Belle would recognise. Perhaps it was time to start going by the sounds, rather than the sight. He grabbed the laptop and found a phonetic translation program. Contrary to popular belief, Joseph was not as technologically illiterate as a lot of people liked to think that he was, and despite the Catholic church’s attachment to tradition and holding on to the past, it was not at all technophobic when it came to its research. The entrenched perception was something that Gold and Joseph had often found useful when they had been investigating together, especially the cases that were more obvious frauds. No-one ever expected the mild-mannered priest to get out a computer and start fact-checking.

Whilst he was waiting for the program to do its work, he hefted the tome of Arthurian mythology onto his lap, flicking back to the bookmarked page for Nimue. With a character who had been around for so long and undergone so many different interpretations, it was virtually impossible to work out precisely which one that the entity was referring to. The name had been scrawled at the very bottom of the page, ostensibly beneath the question ‘what are you looking for?’ The connection, the broken bloodline… Gold had said that he thought it was his own bloodline that had been broken, and that they would find any clues in his family tree rather than Belle’s.

_What are you looking for?_

_The bloodline was broken._

_Nimue._

Joseph sighed and rubbed his forehead against the rapidly oncoming headache that was beginning to bloom there.

Could it be that in the midst of all the Arthurian mythology and all the legends that had sprung up about it, Nimue had been a real person back in the depths of history? Could it be that it was her bloodline that the entity was looking for? He had already worked out that he needed to go back several centuries in order to work out where all this had begun, so now it was time to take a different tack. Enough of the stories and the legends and the books of mythology that had been written and re-written so many times over the years. Enough of the various different interpretations of the character, as a seductress or as a benevolent Lady of the Lake, an enemy or an apprentice of Merlin, a benefactor of Arthur and Avalon. Leave aside the fiction and get down to the facts, whatever they might be.

He shut the book with a definitive thump and turned back to the computer as it beeped to show a new incoming message on Skype. It was a contact request from Belle French.

Joseph hesitated before opening the message. Thus far, all he knew about Belle had come from Gold, and whilst he had been thinking that it might be useful for him to talk to Belle herself about her experiences, he had not mentioned that to Gold yet. Gold had obviously given Belle his name and she was seeking him out for herself. At least it showed that she was taking an active interest in solving her own problem, he supposed, but something made him wary.

He clicked on the message.

_Hi Joseph, sorry if I’m overstepping a mark in contacting you directly but I thought it would be easier than having Rum passing messages all the time. If you’d rather go through him as a sanity check/to stay further removed from the case, that’s fine. Kind regards, Belle._

Perhaps against his better judgement, he accepted the contact request.

_It’s very nice to meet you, Belle._

He sat back, waiting for her next message, and he wondered what it was that had made her seek him out personally. He was still going to pass all his findings on to Gold; for simplicity’s sake if nothing else. He didn’t want to be having to keep track of whom he had told what to, considering that sometimes he had trouble keeping track of what day of the week it was. Having a juicy mystery to keep his mind occupied had certainly helped his mental state in the last few days, but right now, despite having made something of a breakthrough, he was itching to open the whisky bottle, just to take the edge off and let him concentrate further on what he was doing. The phonetic translation program turned up nothing, just even more gibberish than he was already dealing with.

Joseph frowned, and took the results of his research, running them through the program to translate it back. Perhaps there was something he could work with there. It was of secondary importance really, because it was clear that Nimue was the key to the whole thing. The entity wouldn’t have been so violent when writing her name if it wasn’t important. A simple Google search had not revealed much in terms of anything new, all the entries on the first few pages were all to do with the character or with various beauty companies of the same name. Probably wanting to evoke the image of the eternally beautiful Lady of the Lake. There was nothing obvious about a real person called Nimue, either in the present day or back in the annals of time. Of course, going back to the era before the Internet was always going to pull up some interesting results, but Joseph had hoped that he could at least find _something_ to be going on with. Skype pinged again with a message from Belle.

_How’s it going? Sorry, I don’t want to sound pushy. I’m just interested. The Thing’s been quiet lately so we don’t have any more information to go on and I don’t want to try and goad it out in case something bad happens._

Joseph smiled; he liked how she called it the Thing, and he replied to her.

_You seem worried by its silence._

_I am a little. It’s been a constant presence and annoyance until I moved here and when I first got here, it was very active. The sudden quiet is unusual._

_Well, I’ll let Gold know as soon as I have anything._

Although Joseph was not suspicious of Belle in and of herself, he thought that perhaps it would be better to keep the details that he had uncovered between himself and Gold; who had more of a day to day handle on the situation. He did not want to inadvertently arm the entity with knowledge that could make it harder to tackle in the long run.

_Thank you so much. I’m sorry you’re getting dragged into this, but it really means a lot. This has been affecting me my entire life, and the thought that I might finally be free of it is a hopeful one._

Joseph thought back to the details that Gold had already given him about Belle’s life, right back to the prediction that the psychic had made to her pregnant mother. The entity had been with Belle since before she was born, but it had not been passed through her bloodline, or else the black cloud the psychic had seen would have been present around her mother as well, not just the child. His fingers paused over the keyboard as a theory occurred to him. It was just a thread, something very faint, and he had no way of knowing whether pulling on it would pull him down a rabbit hole that he didn’t want to visit. Finally he decided to bite the bullet and go for it.

_Belle, did your parents ever go to Scotland before you were born?_

There was a long pause, and Joseph was beginning to think that he’d jumped in with both feet far too quickly and she was thinking that he was some kind of weirdo. Well, he had no idea how much Gold had already told her about him so she might already think that he was some kind of weirdo.

_Not as far as I know. My aunt lived there for a couple of months though. That was in the seventies. She died before I was born so I can’t really elaborate much._

Suddenly a whole new line of enquiry opened up before him. Scotland was the one link he had. Gold had been born there, a member of Belle’s family had lived there, and the entity spoke an ancient Scottish language. It was a tenuous link, but it was a link nonetheless. He only hoped that Gold’s research into his own family tree would prove fruitful. It was becoming ever clearer that this entity was linked to the both of them.

Another message from Belle arrived.

_Is everything all right?_

_I have absolutely no idea,_ Joseph replied honestly. It looked like he was going to have to go to Scotland.

_Well, good luck. And thanks again._

_You’re welcome._

Belle’s icon became unavailable, and it was clear that the conversation was closed. Joseph wondered if he would ever meet her in the flesh. He’d looked her up online after Gold had mentioned her, just as Gold himself had, and he had seen the grainy photo with the shadows under her eyes belying something much deeper and darker at work beneath the surface. He shook his head. He was getting far too close, far too involved, and the last time that had happened, it had brought about a catastrophic end to his career. It had often been said that Joseph’s problem was caring too much. He wanted to help people, he always had, and that coupled with his interest in the supernatural had been what had led him to the priesthood and his particular niche calling within it in the first place. When he had been defrocked, he had vowed never to get involved again, but here he was, not only getting involved but considering the possibility of getting more involved.

The last time he had got involved, too involved, someone had ended up dead, and he really did not want that to happen to Belle. He was going to have to keep his distance, but at the same time, the mystery kept drawing him in, kept him wanting to help and wanting to solve it. All he could hope was that he had learned from his mistakes and would be able to avoid repeating them.

Never underestimate an entity. It was one of the cardinal rules of dealing with demons and evil forces, and it was one that Joseph was determined not to do again. If he had to confront this one, then he would take all the necessary precautions and then some. With any luck, it would not come down to a confrontation. He had never really liked that word anyway, with its foreboding connotations of a final battle between good and evil when really, he was just a messenger in the grander scheme of things. With any luck, they could work out what the entity was and how to appease it. Gold would be able to find out about his family’s history with this entity, they would be able to put it back on the right track peaceably, without the need for an exorcism.

Only God could help them if it came down to that.

 


	16. Chapter 16

**Sixteen**

Gold wasn’t quite sure what to make of Belle having decided to find Joseph for herself and make contact with him. Still, he accepted that he had not told her all that much about the man, and since Joseph was dealing with the entity that was living in her head and Gold was feeding him information about her, she would probably want to cut out the middle man. Or at least make some kind of contact with the mysterious priest that Gold kept talking about so that she could check him out.

Ultimately, no matter how much Gold might be involved in the case, and how much all their recent revelations had linked him to it even more intrinsically, it was Belle’s health, safety and life that they were dealing with, and he appreciated that she might want to take some extra precautions.

There was just one thing that niggled at the back of his mind, and that was the fact that he had been trying to keep Joseph as far away from everything that was happening in Storybrooke as possible. It would be easier to keep him on the wagon if everything was distilled through Gold and he did not get it straight from the horse’s mouth.

Still, Joseph seemed to be happy enough for the moment and was still sending all his findings to Gold for collation. In a way, it would be useful for him and Belle to talk independently and for him to be brought into the circle in his own right, as he would be able to tell them exactly what they needed to say in order to communicate with this entity, having pretty much made a career of doing exactly that.

The problem that they faced now was actually getting to the point of being able to communicate with it. After a few days of blissfully event-free sleep, Belle’s blackouts had returned and with them, her sense of despondency and overwhelming exhaustion. She had yet not left the apartment above the library when her consciousness was absent, but she still lived in fear of zoning out in the middle of the day and walking into traffic.

Joseph had suggested a few more questions to ask the entity to try and waylay it in the way that they had done before, but thus far nothing had worked. It seemed like it was on a mission of some kind, and having been interrupted once before, it wasn’t going to let anything get in its way now. The thought was a chilling one, and it was keeping Gold awake at night.

They had arranged to go to Boston and see Ella in two weeks’ time. Belle had been a little sceptical at first, and more than a little worried. Although it was obvious that the entity seemed to have been coming to him in particular when it had been moving north, she didn’t want to think about what would happen if she started moving around again after having become settled in Storybrooke and beginning to see some vague patterns in the entity’s behaviour. Still, she was at the stage where she would quite happily entertain any avenues that were open to her, and if palmistry and tarot were two of those paths then so be it.

Gold’s thoughts came full circle again. Not only was Joseph getting more involved in the case, he had now also brought Ella in on it, and now that Belle was sleepwalking again and the entity was definitely active once more, he wondered if he would be placing Ella in any danger when they went to visit. A small part of him was tempted to call the whole thing off, but at the same time, he really needed access to whatever information about his family that Ella could dig up for him.

Joseph’s last report had said that he was going to chase down a lead in Scotland, and Gold was beginning to think that this entire thing was getting too far out of their hands. He had seen a thread of interest in Belle’s case, and he had tugged on it, and now everything was unravelling too quickly into a tangle too large for him to hold onto all of its ends.

He was still contemplating all this at three o’clock in the morning, staring at the ceiling in the dark and trying to ignore the howling wind throwing itself against the windows, when there came the shrill and urgent sound of the doorbell.

Gold sat bolt upright in bed, immediately alert. There was no way that was a good sign. People did not ring the doorbell at three in the morning unless there was an absolute catastrophe going on. He got out of bed, and paused halfway across the room to the wardrobe for his dressing gown.

Who the hell wanted his attention at this time of night? The only other time he’d had nocturnal visitors lately was Belle, under the instruction of something that might or might not be a completely separate mind in her body. But even then, the two times that Belle had come to his house in the night, she had not rung the doorbell. She’d come into the back garden, heading for the study windows.

He spurred himself back into movement as the doorbell rang again, for longer this time, its persistent trill grating against his back teeth. By the time the noise stopped, he had retrieved his dressing gown, slippers and cane, and was out of his bedroom. Maybe the entity was learning, and had decided to try the doorbell as a way of being let into his home. He had to wonder if the Circle of Light was protecting the house as it had always done when he had been a child living with his aunts. If that was preventing the entity from coming any closer, then opening the front door to it probably wouldn’t be a good idea.

The doorbell trilled again, and Gold knew that he was going to have to do something about it, whatever that might be. He crossed the landing and looked out of the spare bedroom, which overlooked the driveway, to see if he could make out any signs of what was going on out there, and his blood ran cold. The house’s structure meant that overhang hid the person at the door from view, but he could see Storybrooke’s sheriff’s cruiser outside. Something was very, very wrong.

He took the stairs as quickly as he dared, and wrenched the front door open. Graham was standing there, buffeted by the wind, and he looked about as worried as Gold felt.

“Sheriff Humbert?”

“Mr Gold, I’m sorry to disturb you in the middle of the night, but this isn’t something I’ve ever come across before.” He looked over his shoulder towards the cruiser, but it was empty, and then he turned back to Gold, steeling himself as if to say something unpleasant.

“I just found Belle French in the middle of the street,” he said eventually. “She was like a zombie, just standing there, completely unresponsive. It was like someone had turned her brain off. No coat or shoes, just pyjamas. She looked completely catatonic and I couldn’t make her move. I took her to the hospital, but halfway there she seemed to come to and she wanted me to bring her to you instead, she said that she must have been heading towards your house although she didn’t remember why. I took her to the hospital anyway and she passed out in the back of the car not long after that. I think she’s in shock. But all the same, I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on what’s going on.”

Gold sighed, knowing that whatever he said would sound completely ludicrous to Graham’s ears and wondering how he could couch it in laymen’s terms that wouldn’t send the man running for the hills, end up with Gold in handcuffs for whatever crime Graham thought he might be guilty of as regarded Belle, or end up with Belle in a mental ward. He waved Graham inside and led the way through to the kitchen. They were definitely going to need coffee to get through this one.

“Miss French sleepwalks,” he said, deciding to begin with the benign and see how far he got. “The last two times she’s done so, she’s ended up walking in the direction of my house. It makes sense that this is where she’d be coming again.”

Graham nodded and accepted the cup of coffee. Gold thought that if there was one advantage to living in a small town as opposed to still living in New York, it was the fact that the local law enforcement tended to know most people personally and would sit down and listen to their side of the story before arresting them.

“I guess that would explain it,” he said. “I know that you two are, well, becoming an item.”

Gold thought back to the memory of his and Belle’s first kiss, outside the library. “Yes, we are.”

Saying the words made it real, Gold thought, and made it that slightly bit scarier when he realised just how close he had become to what had started out as a case of professional interest.

“Is she all right?” Gold asked.

“Her feet were cut up pretty bad from walking on the road with no shoes, and she’s obviously freezing cold, but she didn’t seem injured in any other way.” Graham still seemed perturbed, like there was something else that he wasn’t telling Gold.

“Sheriff?” he pressed.

Graham shook his head. “It’s nothing. Just the night and the wind and the old rumours about this house being haunted, they’re getting the better of me.”

“Sheriff, I used to make my living investigating the paranormal. Nothing’s going to shock me.”

Graham sighed.

“I can’t explain it. It was just the feeling that there was something wrong about her. You know that sensation you get sometimes, of someone walking over your grave?”

Gold nodded.

“Well, the way she was staring so blankly, I don’t mind telling you that it gave me the heebie jeebies. I mean, I’ve seen people spaced out before, but never like that. It was like…” He paused and shivered. “It was like there was something else in there.”

Gold stayed silent, thinking about Graham’s words. This was the first time that someone else had come into contact with the entity, outside of its brief appearance in Archie Hopper’s office whilst she had been under hypnosis. This was the first time that someone had seen it in its natural state, so to speak. Belle had said that her father had seen it and had refused to talk about it, but from Graham’s reaction, it was clear that Moe French had seen something similar and experienced a similar discomfort, or even fear, of what was sharing his daughter’s mind.

More than ever, Gold was considering that the answer to this conundrum was definitely and entirely supernatural. Just talking to Belle about these things was one thing, and getting Joseph involved to prove or disprove something’s existence based on gobbledegook writings was another, but Graham was an independent witness, a sensible man with an entirely non-sensational head on his shoulders, and he’d experienced something not completely explicable.

Presently the sheriff gave a snort of laughter with very little humour behind it.

“Considering your previous line of work, maybe it’s a good thing that Belle seems to sleepwalk towards you.”

He had no idea how accurate he was, and Gold pushed the chilling thought to the back of his mind. He wondered how much Belle would remember of the night’s events once she woke up in the hospital, and whether her waking up there would cause even more harm.

“Can I help you with anything else, Sheriff?” he asked.

Graham shook his head. “Not tonight. I’ll need to speak to Belle to get her version of events, but that can wait till morning. Thank you for the coffee.”

“You’re welcome.”

Gold let Graham out of the house and watched the cruiser back down the driveway until it was out of sight, before closing the door and leaning against it with a heavy sigh. They weren’t wrong when they had thought that the entity was picking up the pace. Now it had landed Belle in the hospital. A part of him wanted to go and see her, to make sure that she was all right, but he knew that the middle of the night was not the best time, and she would probably still be unconscious for a while.

He really wanted to be there when she woke up, to reassure her that things were going to be ok despite the fact she’d woken up in hospital, but deep down he knew that any reassurance he could give would be hollow and untruthful. Besides, Graham would want to speak to her first and make sure that no funny business had been going on.

All the same, he was going to have to speak to her soon. If they wanted to avoid something like this happening again, then they needed to move their investigation on to the next level, but he had no idea what that next level was going to be.

 


	17. Chapter 17

**Seventeen**

Gold drummed his fingers against the arm of the chair, no doubt annoying the nurse behind the emergency department reception desk, but in that moment he couldn’t bring himself to care. It was too early in the morning to play into social niceties and on top of that, Belle was somewhere in there having collapsed in the back of a police car following an episode.

The nurse shot him another dark look, and Gold ignored her. Storybrooke was a quiet town and its hospital never too busy, especially this early in the morning, so he was the only person in the waiting room. That was probably a good thing; had there been any other patients or family members there, then awkward questions might be asked about what the hell was going on.

Graham had called him again just after six to say that Belle was awake and he was going to speak to her; Gold had wasted no time in racing out of the house and making his way to the hospital to check that she was all right. He hadn’t bothered going back to bed after the sheriff’s visit and had instead stayed up, working on Belle’s case and trying to piece together everything that they had already found out, trying to shed some light on the current situation. He wondered if Belle’s apartment would show any evidence of the entity trying to communicate, or if it had bypassed all of their questions and come straight out to try and find him.

“Mr Gold?”

Graham came out of the door that led to the ward, and Gold shot to his feet.

“Is she all right?”

Graham nodded. “A bit shaken, and she’s on painkillers for her feet, but other than that she seems to be ok.” He shrugged, and looked a little apologetic as he spoke again. “She doesn’t remember any of it, but that’s par for the course with sleepwalking cases, as far as I’m aware. The nurses will tell you more.”

“Thanks.”

“All in the line of duty.” Graham smiled. “It’s obvious that you care very deeply for her.”

Gold sighed, that was all part of the problem, and there was no use in denying it. A small part of him wondered if the entity was counting on that and using it, although for what ends he did not yet know.

Graham stepped back so that he could get through into the ward, and a nurse took him over to Belle. She was at the end of the ward, staring at the sunrise through the window, and she didn’t notice his approach immediately.

She was paler than she had been when Gold had last seen her, no doubt as a result of her dramatic night, and she was picking nervously at her fingernails.

“Belle?”

She turned suddenly when she heard his voice, startled, but then her pensive face relaxed slightly, and she waved him over. Her eyes were downcast as he settled himself in the chair beside her bed.

“Well, this is embarrassing,” she muttered. “It’s been a long while since I ended up in the hospital. I suppose I should be grateful that Graham didn’t run me over.”

Gold reached over and took one of her hands, and she returned his grip gratefully; her fingers were still freezing and her nails felt like little shards of ice digging into his palm.

“Still no memory?” he asked.

“Nothing. One minute I was at home, the next I was in the back of the police car and the next I was in the hospital. I don’t think that second one was anything to do with the Thing, though. I think that was just shock.”

“How are you feeling?”

Belle shrugged. “Ok, I guess. No worse than I usually feel after an episode. My feet hurt, of course, but that’s to be expected. All the same…” She trailed off, and Gold could tell that there was something else bothering her.

“Belle? What is it? Even the slightest thing could help us shed some light on what’s happening with the entity.”

“I can’t quite put my finger on it, but this time seems different to the other times. I can’t remember what happened during the blackout but it feels more intense, somehow. Like whatever I was doing, I was doing it with more of a sense of purpose. This time it feels scarier than before, even though I didn’t wander as far as I have in the past. I’m worried. If the Thing’s on some kind of mission, and it got unexpectedly interrupted when Graham pulled up and I snapped out of it, I don’t want to think about what it might do to get itself back on track.”

Gold closed his other hand over hers where she was still clinging on desperately.

“It’ll be all right,” he said, although he knew that it was foolish to make such promises in the face of all the unknowns that the situation was throwing at them. “We’ll get to the bottom of what it wants and then we’ll be able to make it go away.”

Belle snorted. “I wish I had your optimism.”

She turned away, looking out of the window again, and Gold wondered if he ought to leave her in peace. If it wasn’t for her hand still holding his like a limpet, then he’d probably slip away quietly. He knew that his positive thinking wasn’t really helpful when he wasn’t the one that all these scary things kept happening to, but at the same time, if Belle was the one thinking that everything was going wrong and she would never be free of her entity, then he had to be the one keeping morale up. They couldn’t both give in to a downward spiral of thought or they would never get anywhere.

Presently Belle turned back towards him.

“Could you do me a favour please?” she asked. She sounded sheepish, and there was an embarrassed little smile on her face as she looked at him.

“Of course. What is it?”

“Could you go to my apartment and get me some clothes and shoes please? If this time is like any of the rest of the times I’ve wandered then the door should still be open, just left on the latch. For all the effort it takes me to get out of the place, whatever it is seems to want me to be able to get back in again in a hurry if needs be. And, you know, if you could check that my laptop and the TV haven’t been lifted whilst I’ve been out of it, that would be great too.”

Gold nodded. “I’ll go right away.” He paused. “I am going to need my hand back.”

Belle laughed, and brought his hands, clasped tightly around hers, to her lips, pressing a kiss to his knuckles before finally letting go of him.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “Thanks for everything. I know that since I walked into your life, all I’ve done is bring trouble with me, and I get the feeling that I’m only going to be bringing more over the next few days. So thank you for sticking with me. You know, if you want to back out at any time, I won’t be offended.”

Gold shook his head. “No. I think I’m too invested in what happens next to give up on you now.”

Her smile was weak, but genuine.

“You have no idea how much that means to me,” she said. “So many people have given up on me over the years. Including myself. You’re the first person who’s stuck by me since my dad.”

Gold knew that the memory of her father and the agony of not knowing exactly what had happened to him, especially knowing that she might have been able to do something to save him had she been mentally present, were painful things for Belle to deal with, and he knew how much her father had meant to her.

He just nodded. “Well, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Thank you.”

On impulse, Gold leaned across and pressed a kiss to her forehead, earning a little giggle from her in return. As long as he could try to keep her humour up, then the battle was not yet lost.

It didn’t take him long to get across the town to Belle’s apartment, and as expected, the door swung open with just a light push. A cursory sweep of the place showed that her electronics were all still where they should be and no opportunistic sneak thieves had seen her door open and decided to take a chance. The little home security cameras that she’d installed were watching him with their ominous red recording lights still on, and Gold wondered if they would hold any clues, but he didn’t feel comfortable in going through the footage without Belle present. They had watched some of the recordings from her episodes over the last couple of days, but mostly there was nothing to be gleaned from them; she usually just sat on the end of her bed staring at her bedroom door or stood in the kitchen.

Quickly he moved across the apartment and into Belle’s bedroom to fetch her stuff. The bed covers were messed up in a heap on the floor but the rest of the room seemed to be tidy enough. Belle had already said that the entity didn’t seem to be malevolent towards her own life per se, not like a ghost or poltergeist that would move things around or cause chaos.

It was then that he noticed the back of the door. Like before, they had tacked up a sheet of questions that they had hoped the entity would provide answers to. Up until tonight, it seemed to have ignored them, or perhaps just been unable to respond for whatever reason.

Now it was a different kettle of fish. The writing was laboured and scrawling, just as it had been the previous time, but these messages were far more legible, written in plain English, albeit with somewhat peculiar syntax.

Gold pulled the paper off the door and snapped a couple of pictures of it on his phone before folding it up and putting it on the side. It was unnerving enough for him; he didn’t really want Belle to suddenly see it when she got back into her own place having already had enough shocks for one night. She could choose to look at it in her own time, on her own terms.

He felt awkward going through her closet and ended up grabbing what was obviously a gym bag containing running shoes and comfortable workout gear; she wouldn’t want to be wearing any of her sky-scraping high heels with her feet all bandaged up, after all. Before he left, he took another look at the paper, committing the words thereon to memory. Belle’s neat handwriting asked four questions, suggested by Joseph in the hope that they would complement his own research in the UK. Gold had no idea whether these answers were even relevant to the questions, but either way, he hoped that they would prove enlightening to his partner in crime.

_Where did you come from?_

_Darkness. I am the dark and I will return to the dark. Before was nothing and after will be nothing._

_How far have you come from where you began?_

_I have crossed many seas and many miles, many obstacles put in my way. I fly. Fly. On my own wings and the wings of others, the wings of the wind._

_Who were you with before Belle?_

_I was abandoned cut loose the bloodline was broken._

It was the final question that put the fear into Gold. Joseph had suggested that the easiest way to find out about the bloodline and whose it was would be to ask the entity about it directly.

_Who broke the bloodline?_

_Traitor pride villainy trickery greed THEY KNEW I WAS COMING AND THEY SHUT ME OUT I WAS BETRAYED BUT MY TIME DRAWS NEAR._

They had already surmised that the entity was upping the ante, but these stark capitals, the harsh lines of the pencil on the paper showing anger and frustration, told them in chilling black on white just how much it was on the warpath. It was clear that they had to get a move on and stop the thing before it was too late and it did whatever it was going to do when its time came.

Gold shivered, and left the flat, grabbing Belle’s outdoor keys from the dresser and locking up in case the opportunists got a second wind.

She was waiting for him anxiously by the time he got back to the hospital.

“What did you see?” she asked as soon as he got back to her bedside. “You’re looking as pale as I feel. Did it leave a message?”

Gold nodded.

“Let’s just put it this way, I think we might need to start working a little more quickly.” They had to find a way of communicating the entity directly, rather than just through the paper messages, and Gold had an idea. It might not be the safest or most thought-through of ideas, but it was the only one he had.

“Belle,” he began, “would you be willing to go under hypnosis again?”

 


	18. Chapter 18

_“You know, I swear that every time I speak to you, you’ve managed to make this case even more complicated.”_

Gold grimaced at the accusatory tone in Joseph’s voice. He had emailed his latest findings to his friend with the request to contact him as soon as he was able, and had been surprised when he’d received the phone call less than half an hour later. On the one hand, he supposed that he ought to be grateful that the case was getting Joseph up and about and out of the house, and getting him involved with the world again. On the other hand, the former priest did have a point. It felt like he had just opened up a huge can of worms and he was trying desperately to gather up all the wriggly little critters and shove them back in and get the lid on before they managed to completely screw up something.

“In my defence,” Gold began, “I really don’t think that I’m the one that’s making things complicated. I think that’s more the entity’s fault.”

_“Hmm.”_  Joseph didn’t sound entirely convinced about that, and Gold heard him give a long sigh on the other end of the phone.  _“So, what is it that I can help you with? Your mail made it sound urgent.”_

“It’s important, but not urgent. We’ve made an appointment for Belle to have another hypnosis session this afternoon to try and work out what was going on last night.”

Once Belle had been released from the hospital they had returned to her apartment and reviewed the camera footage from the previous night. It was a chilling change to her usual staring, as she had got out of bed with an air of determined purpose, reading the messages on the bedroom door and scrawling her answers quickly before letting herself out of the house. There was no doubt that she had been on a mission last night, and Gold wondered what it was that had triggered it. Given the now blindingly obvious connection between them, he wondered if it was something that he had done himself, however subconsciously, that might have sent some kind of signal to the entity.

_“Go on,”_  Joseph said.  _“I think I can tell where you’re going with this.”_

“I don’t suppose that you would be able to join us via Skype and see if you can talk any sense into this thing?” Gold asked.

Joseph sighed again.  _“I knew I could tell where you were going with that.”_

“Out of all of us, you’re the one who’s best at communicating with these kinds of things,” Gold wheedled. “You’ve had far more experience than the rest of us. The extent of my interaction with entities and possession usually consists of me trying to confuse people into betraying themselves, but that’s not what I want to do here. You said yourself when I first called you that talking to the thing directly would be our best bet of finding out what it wants and why it’s here, and you know the right questions to ask.”

_“I keep telling you the right questions to ask, and you keep giving me the evidence that the entity is definitely at least attempting to converse on our level.”_

“I know, but I think it would expedite the process if you were able to talk to it directly,” Gold said. “As you can see from its latest messages, it doesn’t look like we have a lot of time. We can’t just keep passing written notes back and forth, we need to be able to talk to it in real time, and you’re the best person to do that.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone for a long time, and Gold could tell that Joseph was considering it at least. Although his experiences at the end of his career might have dampened his enthusiasm for the supernatural somewhat, he was still the same man who had always loved to help people and would do whatever he could to alleviate their spiritual suffering. Belle was definitely suffering now, in more ways than one, and Joseph wouldn’t have taken on her case in the first place if he didn’t want to help her.

_“Ok,”_  he said eventually.  _“I guess you’ve got a point. How do we even know that the entity’s going to make an appearance when Belle goes under, though?”_

“We don’t. We’re just working off what happened last time.” Gold paused. “You know, having another person present, even if not physically, might make Dr Hopper feel a bit better about the whole thing. I don’t think he likes to admit it, but I think he was rather shaken by the entity’s first appearance in his office.”

News of Belle’s nocturnal excursion landing her in the hospital had been quick to spread around the town. It was a small place and it wasn’t often that a newcomer arrived and began to cause a stir in this way. Having the sheriff and hospital getting involved was just the icing on the cake of what was already turning out to be quite an intriguing relationship. When Gold had gone into the diner to get breakfast, his early morning adventures having led him to skip it at home, he had been greeted by more than a few funny looks from Ruby and the rest of the regulars. They needed to get to the bottom of the entity so that Belle could live a normal life free from neighbourly scrutiny, if nothing else.

_“Well, I shall do my best to assist. I do think we might be getting somewhere. The answers that the entity’s given this time seem to match up with what I’ve been finding out here in Scotland. This thing goes back a lot further than we could dare to imagine.”_

This revelation did not do anything to bolster Gold’s confidence in their ability to master it.

“Yes, tell me something I don’t know, Joseph. Belle’s appointment is booked in for three o’clock, that’s eight o’clock your time. I guess I’ll see you there.”

_“I’ll see you later. Hopefully this thing can give us some decent answers.”_

Gold didn’t hold out any hope of decent answers, but at that point, he would take any answers that he could get.

X

If Archie Hopper was surprised at Gold bringing his laptop with him to Belle’s hypnosis session and setting it up on the chair beside him, then he didn’t show it. Whilst his time with patients was confidential, if the patient wanted to bring other people in on the treatment then he couldn’t stop them. He wasn’t sure just how effective the hypnosis was going to be at bringing up the memories that Belle repressed during her blackouts. In his professional experience, people tended to blot out memories of events for a reason, because they were too traumatic of painful to be relived. He thought that Belle might be poking a sleeping lion with her trying to remember everything so soon after the event, but at the same time, medical research showed that amnesiacs were more likely to remember things the sooner they had their memories jogged, ideally within the first twenty-four hours after the memory loss occurred.

It was clear that Belle was fearful about going under again, but she was stubbornly determined to go through with it, her desire to know what was happening in her own head outweighing any fears that she might have had.

She settled herself on the couch, giving a wave to the man who had joined them on Gold’s computer screen.

“Joseph, Dr Hopper. Joseph’s been assisting us with Belle’s rather delicate case and we’re hoping that by sitting in on this session he’ll be able to shed some more light on everything,” Gold explained.

“Right…” This was definitely the most unorthodox thing that Archie had ever come across in his career, but he had a job to do and a patient whose memories needed to be recovered, so he decided to just get on with it.

“All right Belle, just like last time, relax and let your mind drift. You’re in a safe place here. Let go.”

Gold could tell that it was taking Belle longer to go under than it had taken the last time, her hands still fiddling where they were clasped on her chest, but finally she stilled, her eyes closed. With Belle’s relaxation, so Gold could feel the tension mounting in his own body. He had no idea how the entity might react to being drawn out like this, and even less idea how it would react to being questioned by Joseph.

“All right, Belle,” Archie began, his voice slow and soothing. “Let’s begin. Where are you, and what can you see?”

“I’m in my bedroom,” Belle replied. “There are questions tacked up on the door and I know that I’m supposed to answer them, but I can’t get the words out right. The answers aren’t coming.”

“What happens now?” Archie asked.

“The answers come,” Belle says. “I write them down, and then I leave. I know I have to leave. I have to go outside. It’s outside, what I need is outside.”

Gold and Archie exchanged a look. That was what Belle had said the previous time she had been under hypnosis, just before the entity had begun to speak. It felt like they were retreading old ground, not really getting anywhere.

“Where are you going Belle? Where are you headed?”

“Gold,” she replied, and Gold felt a shiver run down his spine.

_“Why is he important?”_  Joseph asked.  _“What is your connection to him?”_

“The missing link,” Belle snapped, and once again, Gold found himself startling at the change in her tone, the voice that was hers but at the same time sounded like it simply could not belong to her. The entity was awake, and it was answering them. Looking over at Archie and back at the laptop screen showing Joseph’s face, he could tell that the other two men were just as unnerved as he was by the sudden change. Nevertheless, Joseph pressed on.

_“What is he the missing link to?”_  he asked.

“The connection!” Belle exclaimed. “He has always been the connection! The missing link!”

Archie was looking at Gold with something akin to blind fear, but Gold swallowed the metallic taste of terror at the back of his throat, forcing himself to concentrate on Joseph and the entity’s conversation. This was the closest that they had ever come to having a halfway decent and understandable discussion with it, and they couldn’t cut that short prematurely just because they didn’t like what it was telling them.

_“You said that the bloodline has been broken. Whose bloodline?”_

“The one that first invoked me. Gold. Always Gold, from the dawn of my time. He is the connection, the missing link.”

_“You said you were betrayed. Who broke your bloodline? Was it Gold?”_

Gold stared at Joseph in disbelief; was he really directing the entity’s wrath towards him? But then he realised that he did not mean himself, Rum Gold, specifically. Just his family name, stretching far back into the annals of time. It was a strange time to remember that his family had always had a first-born son to pass on their name to; he was no exception. Maybe there was a reason for that.

“Yes.” Perhaps it was the first time they’d actually got a straight answer out of the thing.

_“When was the bloodline broken? Was it in 1968? That’s forty-nine years ago.”_

“I am aware of what year it is,” the entity said sourly. “Yes. That is when it was broken.”

Gold’s stomach was beginning to churn. He had been three years old in 1968. It was the year that his father had brought him to America and left him with his aunts. It was the year that he had started seeing the shadow outside his bedroom window.

Joseph looked incredibly uneasy, but he pressed on nonetheless.

_“When did you leave Scotland?”_

“Later. I do not know exactly when. I was completely untethered. I needed a fresh host, new blood, to sustain me until I found my bloodline again.”

The outcome was looking bleaker and bleaker the more that the entity spoke.

_“Could it have been 1972?”_

“Perhaps.”

The fact that Joseph was being so specific with dates was worrying Gold. He wondered how much the other man had managed to find out and not tell him. On the other hand, the entity was co-operating with him, and he wondered how much longer they could keep this up. Joseph certainly seemed to be asking the right questions and getting further than Archie had the previous time; Gold did not regret bringing him in on this session.

_“Who is Nimue?”_  Joseph asked.

“She was the first. My genesis. She made a deal she did not understand.”

Belle suddenly sat bolt upright, and for a moment Gold thought that they were going to see the full force of the entity, but she blinked, and it was clear that Belle was back in the room.

“What happened? Did it come out?”

Gold nodded. “Yes. Much more talkative this time, actually.”

Belle buried her head in her hands. “Oh God…”

“It’s ok.” Gold left his chair and came across to the couch, Archie was already there beside her, trying to reassure her. “We’ll all ok. Are you all right?”

She nodded. “I don’t remember what I said.”

_“It’s all right_ ,” Joseph said.  _“I made notes.”_

Belle glanced over at him. “Did you get anything useful?”

He nodded slowly.  _“Yes. I think I have some answers for you. I’ll collate my findings and send them to Gold. We might be getting to the bottom of this at last. There are some things I need to check first. I’ll have to go back to Scotland again.”_

Gold knew that all he could do was make sure that Belle was all right whilst he waited for Joseph’s report. All the same, that didn’t stop him from being distinctly fearful of what the priest had and would find out.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for this chapter: Alcoholism

The whisky bottle was empty. Joseph knew that it had not been empty when he started, but he didn’t have all that clear a recollection of drinking the majority of its contents. He grimaced at the thought, but pushed it aside. The alcohol probably wasn’t going to help his concentration, and he needed his concentration.

He was sitting in the middle of the living room; all the papers and books that he had consulted and all the notes he had made during the course of this investigation were spread out over the threadbare carpet around him. He wanted to be absolutely sure of what he was presenting to Gold when he gathered everything together into a conclusion, but the more he tried to pull in all his myriad threads of inquiry, the more they seemed to slip away from him.

Maybe that was just the whisky talking. He had been doing so well at staying on the bandwagon, but the conversation with the entity had unnerved him more than he could admit to anyone, least of all Belle and Gold. It had been so long since he had last spoken directly to something like that, and even though he had not been in the same room, had not even been in the same country, it had still shaken him to the very core. Joseph had always had a sense for malevolence, and it was on high alert now. Whatever this entity was, and he was getting worryingly close to working out what it actually was, it was not in any way, shape or form friendly.

A part of Joseph wanted to pack it all in. He wanted to close all the books and burn all the papers and take no more part in it. Some things were left well alone for fear of aggravating something already dangerous, and he was certain that this was one of those things.

On the other hand, though, he couldn’t leave Belle and Gold in the lurch. The very fact that this thing was dangerous meant that they couldn’t just give up and leave it to its own devices. The longer that this entity shared Belle’s mind, the longer she was in danger, and Joseph could not leave her in danger indefinitely. Cases like this were almost always degenerative, and now that the entity was becoming more and more active having finally found its intended target, it would continue to consume Belle’s consciousness until there was nothing left of the young woman, just a shell for the thing possessing her to use as it would.

He drained the last few drops out of the whisky bottle and gave himself a good shake. He had to pull it all together, and more importantly he had to pull himself together, for Gold and Belle’s sake even if not his own. They were counting on him to do the research that they could not, and he could not use his innate knowledge if he had a hangover, therefore anything that he was going to do needed to be done now, before the hangover kicked in.

He grabbed the long piece of paper - actually several pieces of paper held together with sticky tape - upon which he had begun sketching out a timeline. There were three concurrent lines. One for Gold’s family, one for the entity, and one for Belle’s family.

The dates that the entity had confirmed lined up with his own research. Census records that he had found in Scotland showed when Belle’s aunt had lived there, and everything pointed to her having left in 1972. The entity, it seemed, had hitched a lift to Australia with her, and had passed from her to Belle. The fact that she had died before Belle was born was both suggestive and annoying, as it meant that Belle had no recollection of what her aunt had been like - had she suffered the same symptoms? With no other living relatives, it was going to be as hard to get a picture of Belle’s family as it was Gold’s.

Maybe that was something else that was subconsciously unnerving him, the fact that these two souls, completely separate and with no reason to have ever met, had been connected by this entity, and they had no other blood connections. No parents, no siblings, no children. They were both the last of their bloodline as it stood, and that worried him. Bloodline was important to the entity, its continuation was its overarching motive. What would happen when there was no further bloodline for it to pass itself down through?

He pulled himself away from that destructive chain of thought and returned to his timeline, this time lining up the entity with Gold’s family. The entity had confirmed that the bloodline was broken in 1968, which was the same year that Gold’s family had left Scotland and moved to the USA, following his aunts who had moved out there a few years before. At that point in time, there were only three living members of the Gold family - Rum, his father Malcolm, and his father’s aunt Elvira. Rum was only a child and could not have done anything to consciously break a bloodline, although Joseph couldn’t rule out him having done something by accident. Joseph hadn’t wanted to pin the entity down to more precise time frames, and he didn’t think that it had the capacity to be any more precise than that, but he didn’t think that Elvira was the one to break the bloodline either, and besides, she wasn’t part of the direct bloodline that Rum and his father were, so she seemed an unlikely culprit.

Everything seemed to point to Malcolm Gold as the one to have broken the bloodline. Joseph knew very little about Malcolm other than the fact he had existed and he had abandoned his son with his relatives shortly after their arrival in America. It was something that he had never really felt it prudent to explore in any detail, but now he really needed to find out some more about this man. How had he broken the bloodline for a start, and why? If there was something that he had done to untether the entity from his own bloodline, then perhaps there was a way to use it to untether it again from Belle. Of course, then Joseph had the problem of working out what the hell to do with the entity once it had been untethered. Sending it back from whence it came was only an option if he knew from whence it came in the first place.

He was going to have to go back to Scotland for further investigation. He had done some tracing of the Gold family tree whilst he had been there, but he had not gone back all that far as he had been concentrating on trying to find out where the Gold and French bloodlines could have come into contact with each other to initiate a transference of the entity in some way. Now it seemed that he was going to have to keep going back until he found the mysterious Nimue who had been the entity’s first host. At least he knew that it would be an unbroken line backwards from Rum and all he had to do was follow it. Belle had said that she thought the entity was getting on for thousands of years old, so Joseph didn’t hold out all that much hope of finding anything before the records ran out.

He was also rather worried by the large gap between 1968 and 1972. What had the entity been doing for the four years between it being banished from the Gold bloodline and tagging onto Belle’s aunt? Had it been biding its time waiting for the perfect host, or had something else happened?

He thought back to the exact words that the thing had used. In all his years of dealing with such phenomena, Joseph had come to respect the utmost importance of wording. It had said that at the time it left Scotland, it was ‘completely untethered’. That suggested that in spite of the bloodline being broken, it had not left the Gold family completely until that year.

A thought struck him and he grabbed his laptop off the sofa, waving away the idle thought that he was sitting on the floor whilst his notes took up pride of place on all the sitting surfaces, and he tapped out a quick email to Gold. With any luck, he’d still be awake and would answer promptly. Joseph gave a quick glance at the clock and grimaced; it was coming up for three o’clock in the morning and he’d been at this without much of a break ever since the interview with the entity.

_Rum, when did your father die? Do you have a copy of his death certificate?_

He drummed his fingers against the laptop, waiting for a reply although he knew that it was a slim chance. Joseph wondered how Belle was doing, whether Gold had managed to lift her spirits after what could only have been a harrowing experience for her. The two of them were close, that much was obvious. Having only interacted with them separately before now, he had not been able to get a proper grip on their feelings for each other, but having briefly seen them together in Dr Hopper’s office, it was clear that the tenderness that Gold felt for Belle was definitely returned. A more cynical soul might have been suspicious of the entity manipulating the situation in order to get closer to its actual intended victim, but from what Joseph could make out from Belle and Gold’s observations of her behaviour, the entity was only in control of Belle during her episodes, and anything that she did outside of those blackouts was of her own volition.

That was usually the case in possessions like these. The trick was catching the entity and dispelling it before it got to the stage where it could control the shared consciousness without visibly and physically disabling the true mind. He really hoped that it wouldn’t get to that stage. With any luck, his investigations in Scotland would shed new light on the situation and show him the entity’s weaknesses, or at least its origins. The way a demon was summoned usually gave some indication of how it could be banished again.

A new message popped up in his inbox. Gold was evidently getting as little sleep as he was today, but at least he didn’t seem to have interrupted him and Belle. Joseph was surprised by how much he found himself thinking about Belle. He tried to explain it away by saying that he was simply concerned for her welfare, having witnessed possessions like this before and having seen how badly they could affect their hosts, but he knew deep down that there was something else beneath the surface. He shook his head. She was in America with Gold and clearly feeling something for him. He was here in England and he had never interacted with her without a computer screen and several thousand miles between them. Developing a proto-crush on someone just from Skype chat conversations was something out of a romance novel, and Joseph was too old and too socially inept for such a thing to happen to him.

He shook the thoughts of Belle out of his head as much as he could, and looked at Gold’s reply.

_It was May 30th 1972. I have the death certificate. Why… The entity said it had left Scotland in 1972, didn’t it?_

Things were looking rather bleak and Joseph would certainly be the first one to admit that as he replied.

_Yep. What did your father die of?_

The response was almost immediate.

_Heart failure brought on by alcohol misuse. Do you think the entity had something to do with it?_

Joseph looked at his empty bottle of whisky and scrubbed his hands over his face, not needing another reminder of his utter failure to deal with life and all its peripheries in a healthy way. A heavy dose of guilt was exactly what he needed at that point in time, but at least he had solved one mystery. Whatever Malcolm had done to sever the bloodline, he had not managed to sever it fully until he died, at which point it had become completely untethered and had been able to latch on to Belle’s aunt.

Why Belle’s aunt? Joseph shook his head, one problem at a time. Was she just the first person that the entity had found, or had it purposefully sought her out? If there was something in Belle’s bloodline that was similar to Gold’s then that could cause some interesting issues in their relationship.

Joseph smacked his head against the arm of the sofa and tried to refocus on the task at hand. Malcolm, and the time between 1968 and 1972, and what the entity had been doing in Scotland at that time. Had it been floating around aimlessly unable to do anything, or had it been surfing between hosts until it could stick with one permanently. Or had it been like a ghost, tied to a place rather than a person…

It was the lightbulb moment that he needed, and Joseph grabbed the nearest scrap of paper and pencil so that the thought would not be lost to the fog of his hangover next morning - or afternoon at the rate he seemed to be going. He needed to find out where the Golds had lived during their time in Scotland. If they had always lived in the same area, then he might be onto something. Especially if Belle’s aunt had lived in that same area herself.

A clearer picture of events was beginning to take shape in Joseph’s mind, and as soon as he had definitive answers, he should be able to present a full history of the entity and its ties to the Gold bloodline.

Then all they would need to do would be to work out how to defeat it.


	20. Chapter 20

Ella and Ursula’s house was located on the edge of Boston, far enough away from the city centre not to be affected by the noise and bustle but close enough to still be able to say that they lived in Boston. Gold glanced over at Belle as they pulled into the driveway, her eyes wide as she took in the opulent building in front of them.

“Where do you find these friends?” she murmured. Gold just laughed. If that was her reaction to the outside of the house, then she’d probably faint when she actually saw Ella herself.

They had driven down from Storybrooke in the afternoon, arriving at Ella’s in time for dinner. She’d invited them to make a weekend of it and since it had been so long since they had seen each other, Gold had agreed, although somewhat tentatively since he would be bringing Belle, who’d never met Ella and had never been a part of the circles that they had moved in before whilst Gold had still been working. It would be all very well for him and Ella to reminisce about various cases of ages past, but that would leave Belle feeling rather left out.

“Darlings!”

Ella swept out of the house and rushed down the drive towards them, grabbing Gold as he got out of the car and planting a loud kiss on each cheek without actually making contact.

“It’s good to see you too, Ella.”

“I’m very glad you’ve come, actually,” Ella continued, shaking Belle’s hand enthusiastically. “Ursula to let us have the house to ourselves whilst we try to work out what strange kind of legacy your family  left and she’s gone to visit her father. I’d have been incredibly lonely if you hadn’t turned up. Gin can only provide so much companionship.”

She waved them into the house, and Gold felt Belle’s small hand catch his. He looked over at her; she was still looking rather alarmed by Ella’s appearance. If she had been expecting a stereotypical vision of a palmist and tarot reader, then Ella was bound to disappoint with her monochrome hair and designer outfits.

“You’re just in time for dinner,” Ella continued as she led them through the house. “Come in, eat, drink; I’ve got plenty of wine. We can drown our sorrows and leave whatever weirdness has brought you to my doorstep out in the cold for a while.”

Despite everything, it felt good to be back in Ella’s effervescent presence; it was almost as if the years since their last meeting had not passed. All mention of entities and possible possessions were banned by unspoken consent, and Ella made Belle feel welcome in her and Gold’s world effortlessly. Once the meal was over, there was the distinct sense that things couldn’t be put off much longer, and as Ella cleared the plates away, she motioned for Gold to follow her out of the room.

“I’ve dug out some things about your father,” she said once they were out of Belle’s earshot in the kitchen. “It took a while because going through Mother’s diaries is always a fun experience and we ended up getting side-tracked more than we were actually researching. I didn’t want to say anything in front of Belle; I’m not sure how much she knows about the entire situation.” She paused. “And some of the things that Mother said about the late Malcolm Gold are not at all complimentary. In fact, most of them aren’t all that complimentary.”

Gold snorted. “It can’t be anything worse than what the aunts thought of him,” he said. “So what have you got for me?”

Ella’s carefree demeanour faded. “She didn’t know him well,” she began, and it was clear that she was hedging around the subject. It was so unlike Ella to beat about the bush that the effect was dissonant and sat uncomfortably with Gold.

“Ella, just cut straight to the point.”

“Well, you know that Mother was always a bit dramatic. Anyway, she was convinced that there was something wrong with your father’s soul.”

Gold raised an eyebrow. “Really? I wasn’t even sure he had one.”

Ella shot him a look. “I’m trying to be sensible here, Rum,” she said coolly. “Mother said that there was something wrong in his soul. You know how she used to be about auras, yes?”

Gold nodded. “She said mine was brown.”

“That’s supposed to mean that you’re caring.” Ella glanced sideways at Gold. “Ok, yes, I’ll grant you that it might be a hit and miss science. At any rate, she said that your father’s aura was the strangest she’d ever seen, because it had a piece missing.”

“An aura being a spectral force that surrounds someone.” Gold paused. “How on earth can it have a piece missing?”

Ella shrugged. “I’ve no idea, darling. I’m just passing on my mother’s dubious wisdom here; you can’t expect me to actually be able to parse anything out of it. In her diary she wrote that Malcolm Gold freaked her out because his aura had a hole in it. She reckoned that there was something missing from his soul.”

As ludicrous as it sounded, the ravings of a slightly mad woman long since deceased, Gold had to wonder at how accurate it might be. The entity had said that the bloodline was broken in 1968, the year that he and his father had come to America. If his father had been the one to break the bloodline and cut away the entity, then it might make sense that there was something missing about him, and someone who was particularly sensitive to that kind of thing, like Maddie De Ville, might pick up on it.

“As much as I hate to admit it, I think she might have had a point,” Gold said.

Ella threw her hands up. “I don’t want to hear about it,” she said. “Things are already getting a little bit weirder than I counted on. I’ll stick with palms and tarot cards from now on. Speaking of.”

Belle poked her head around the kitchen door. “Am I interrupting?”

“Not at all.” Ella waved her back through to the dining room and took a seat at the table, patting the space opposite her. “You’re right on time, if you want to get started. And if you’d rather put it off and have some more wine to bolster your courage, then you’re right on time for that too.”

Belle sat down. “No, I’m ready. I don’t think that this is the kind of thing that ought to be put off. The longer I wait, the more nervous I’ll be.”

“There’s really no need to be nervous,” Ella said. “I know that Rum and I can be lethal when we get together, but I don’t bite, honestly.”

Gold snorted and Ella glared at him.

“You’re not helping, Mr Gold.” She sighed and turned back to Belle. “Cards or palm first, my dear?”

“I’ll go with the cards,” Belle said. “Then whatever happens you can hopefully read my palm and tell me I’m going to marry a tall, dark, handsome stranger or something else equally clichéd.”

Ella looked Rum up and down. “Well, you’ve got zero out of three so far.”

“What is it with you and making digs at my height?” Gold grumbled, but he dutifully shut up, moving his chair away from the table and letting Belle and Ella concentrate.

Ella’s tarot cards were very beautiful and very old, passed on from mother to daughter throughout the generations for as long as anyone could remember, and for all he thought the art to be a phoney one, the delicacy and love with which Ella handled her cards couldn’t be faked. She shuffled them deftly then handed them to Belle.

“Split the pack into three,” she said. “The topmost cards in each stack will tell your past, present, and future.”

Belle obeyed, and her hand hovered over the top card in the first stack.

“Go on,” Ella encouraged gently. “It’s just card; no matter what it says, it can’t hurt you.”

Quickly, Belle flipped the card, and she recoiled on seeing the image. Gold couldn’t exactly blame her.

“The Devil,” Ella said. She didn’t sound at all perturbed by its appearance, but considering what Gold and Belle knew about the entity that Ella didn’t, he thought that they were justified in being rather more alarmed.

“The Devil represents fear,” Ella continued. “More specifically, living in fear of something. From what I’ve heard, you’ve been living in fear for a while.”

Belle nodded.

“It can also represent bondage and submission, being imprisoned or caged. Any of this sounding familiar?”

“Yes.” Belle’s voice was shaking, and Gold reached out to touch her arm and try to reassure her. Whatever Ella might have known about their unusual case before, he knew that she’d be picking up several more details based on what she was telling Belle about the cards and her reactions to them.

“This has all been happening for a long time, hasn’t it?” Ella asked.

“My entire life.”

“That would suggest that whatever happened to cause this fear and bondage happened before you were born. We’ll leave the past now. It’s done and it can’t be undone. We can only focus on the things we can change. Turn the present.”

Belle flipped the next card, and a pink blush suffused her cheeks as she glanced over at Gold.

“The Lovers,” Ella said. “That’s somewhat self-explanatory, but the Lovers also represents choice, a choice that you’ll have to make very soon. It’s usually taken to mean a choice about a potential partner or something else that will impact your love life, but not necessarily. Whatever choice it is, though, you shouldn’t make it lightly, as it will have lasting ramifications.” Ella paused. “Choice usually goes hand in hand with sacrifice in these cases,” she continued. “I don’t know why, maybe it’s tied in with old notions of purity and virginity. But in order for your choice to come into fruition, you may have to make a sacrifice of something else. That’s another reason why you shouldn’t make it lightly.”

Belle shuddered. “I think maybe I prefer the past,” she muttered.

“No, I wouldn’t think like that. The past is something that you have no power over, but the present and future you can help to control. The choice may be difficult, but at least it is going to be yours and yours alone. Turn the future. Maybe that will set your mind at rest.”

Belle flipped the final card and looked up at Ella. “That’s really not helping,” she said.

“Well, at least it’s not Death,” Ella said, and Belle managed a snort of laughter. “The Tower. Sometimes known as the Lightning-Struck Tower. It represents danger, points of crises and sudden change.”

“At least it’s not Death,” Belle repeated weakly. Ella smiled and placed her hand over Belle’s own.

“It also represents liberation,” she said quietly. “It might be a difficult and dangerous road, but whatever it is that caged you in the past, you’ll be free of it in the future.”

Gold didn’t think that he had ever seen such fervent gratitude in anyone’s eyes before.

“Thank you,” Belle whispered as Ella cleared the cards away.

“You’re welcome. I know that Rum thinks it’s all a bunch of bunkum, but if it brings you comfort, then I can’t see the harm in it. There are so many ways to interpret the cards, and I think we all like to cling to the ones that make the most sense and fit most neatly into our lives. We make our own luck, I think, but we all still need pointers along the way. Do you want a couple of minutes before I do your palm?”

Belle shook her head and wiped her eyes, holding out her hands. Ella took her left and traced her fingers over the lines on it. Gold saw the minute furrow in her brow and was immediately put on high alert.

“Your heart line is very strong,” she said, betraying no sign of anything untoward although Gold could tell that something had perturbed her. “You love deeply and you throw yourself into relationships whole-heartedly once you’re in them. Getting started is the key.”

Belle gave a huff of laughter. “Any tall, dark, handsome strangers on the horizon?”

Ella shook her head. “It’s not that exact. But it looks like you’ll love this deeply twice in your lifetime, and you’ll have two children.”

“What happens to the first love?” Belle asked. She sounded curious rather than worried. “I’d always assumed I’d just meet The One and stay with them forever.”

“That’s the thing,” Ella didn’t bother to hide her puzzlement now. “It looks like everything will happen at the same time. Your partner lines are absolutely identical.”

There was silence for a moment, and Gold felt compelled to break it. Whatever it was that Ella was keeping to herself, he felt sure that it was something that needed to be faced, no matter how uncomfortable that might be.

“Anything else?” he prompted.

“Yes…” Ella ran one glossy red fingernail down a line across the middle of Belle’s palm. “You’ve got two life lines.”

“What?”

“Here. These two lines are the head line and the life line, and they’re both normal. But this one…” She indicated another line between the two, fainter but still definitely there. “This line shouldn’t be here.” She grabbed Gold’s hand unceremoniously and turned it over. There was no corresponding line on his own hand, and Ella didn’t have one either.

“It mirrors your life line almost exactly,” Ella said. She sounded apologetic. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

Belle glanced across at Gold, her eyes wary, and Gold had to admit that perhaps this might have shaken his previously unshakeable cynicism.

“Your life line - your actual life line - is strong and long,” Ella said. “I’m not just saying that to make you feel better, it really is.”

She closed Belle’s fingers over her palm and squeezed.

“You’re going to be all right,” she promised.

Gold wished that he had Ella’s optimism.


	21. Chapter 21

It was getting late into the evening, and Gold was pleasantly surprised by how well Belle had taken to Ella’s company. After Ella had done Belle’s readings, they had once more put the supernatural out of the question and Ella had gone on to recount various tales of Gold’s misspent youth, resulting in much hilarity and a greatly improved mood all round. Even Gold didn’t mind being the butt of the conversation if it made Belle feel happier in herself.

Ella had welcomed Belle into their world without a second thought, not at all nervous about whatever shadows might surround her, and Gold wondered if Ella was less affected by it all because she had always been on the side of the believers, and whilst the very groundwork of everything that Gold had always believed was being chipped away by this latest case, Ella was undergoing no such crisis.

Belle and Gold were alone in the living room; Ella had excused herself to go and call her wife, but Gold knew that it was more an opportunity to leave them alone together to discuss what had happened during the day. Belle had gone quiet and pensive again, staring down at her hands and tracing her fingertips over the lines that Ella had read earlier.

“Penny for them?” Gold asked.

Belle looked up, as if coming out of a trance, and for a moment he wondered if her consciousness had been absent for the past few moments, but then she shook her head and spoke.

“Sorry, in a world of my own there. I was just thinking about what Ella said about my heart line, and loving deeply. I’ll love this deeply twice in my lifetime.” Belle gave a self-deprecating snort. “I guess I’d better get a move on then.”

Her cynicism stirred something in Gold because it felt so similar to his own. “Not a great believer in love, then?”

“Oh no.” Belle smiled. “I believe in love, all right. I’ve seen more than enough examples of love in the world, I don’t think that I could ever not believe in it. I just don’t think that it’s on the cards for me. Having something sharing your head that seems to come out at random intervals and make you go crazy, well, it doesn’t exactly lend itself to lasting relationships. I gave up on finding love for myself a long time ago, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in it. More that I don’t believe it’s possible for me.”

She sighed, turning her hands over and pressing them against her knees, hiding her palms and the tell-tale lines on them that she didn’t understand and that had given her such mixed messages.

“But then again, the cards seemed to tell me that love is in the air as well.” She looked over at Gold. “I know that you think that this is all a load of codswallop, but in a way, I suppose it’s given me some kind of hope. Maybe if I can believe that it’s possible for me to find love, then it will come. Perhaps I’ve created a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’m so sure that everyone’s going to think I’m crazy that I just don’t even try. The few boyfriends I had in the past weren’t exactly complimentary about my mental state.”

“I don’t think that you’re crazy,” Gold said quietly. He wasn’t really sure of their relationship, and perhaps this interaction with Ella had made him less sure. Was he one of the people whom Belle would end up loving so very deeply during her lifetime, or would that come later, once the entity was subdued and she could live a normal life again?

He tried to push the thoughts away. For now, he was here with Belle, and no matter what a few lines on her hands might tell her about her life, he wanted to believe that for however short a time they had, they would be happy together in this strange little relationship that had blossomed from the oddest of circumstances.

Belle looked over at him and smiled.

“Thank you. That means a lot. Especially considering how we first met.”

Gold just reached across and squeezed her hand.

“Besides, I don’t really have the best track record when it comes to relationships myself.”

Belle gave him a quizzical look.

“How come?”

“Let’s put it this way, my ex-wife was very fond on commenting on my tendency to put work above all else. The worst part was that she wasn’t wrong. It was my fault really; we were completely incompatible and it was a mistake from the outset, but I just buried myself in my work and didn’t accept that until it was too late and she was packing her suitcases. But it is true. Working was more important to me than fixing my marriage.”

“Well, you’re not working now,” Belle said. “Or at least, the work that you are doing is with me, so I don’t really think that I’m in the best position to comment.”

There was something unspoken between them, maybe something that would cement their nebulous relationship status into something solid.

“I’m willing to take the chance though, if you are,” Belle continued. “I think that maybe I’ve let my fears take hold of me for too long, and it’s time to start doing things in spite of them, rather than avoiding things because of them.”

She had a lot of love to give, according to her hands, and it was only natural that she wanted to start giving it.

Gold nodded. “Yes. I think I’d like that.”

She smiled, a tired smile to go with the dark circles under her eyes that seemed to be almost permanent now. He wondered if a night in new surroundings would make things better or worse. He’d already warned Ella about Belle’s sleepwalking tendencies. At least this time, if she sought him out, he would only be a few steps down the corridor and she wouldn’t end up outside on the road in an unknown place.

“I think I’m going to turn in,” Belle said. “It’s been a long, overwhelming day. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Sleep well.”

“I certainly hope I will.”

It was a somewhat chilling parting, despite the huff of laughter in Belle’s voice as she said it, and Gold had to wonder.

After Belle had gone upstairs to bed, he went over to the cupboard where he knew that Ella kept her hard liquor and poured himself a generous measure of whisky. Maybe on top of all the wine he’d drunk at dinner it wouldn’t be a good idea, but right now he needed it. Talking about past failed relationships was never the most pleasant of pastimes even if their circumstances hadn’t been so strange.

There was something else that was making him uneasy and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. It wasn’t so much the idea of beginning a relationship with Belle that was the problem; he’d already long since accepted that he was getting very close to her and was definitely more than a little attracted to her in spite of how their relationship had begun. Maybe it was the fact that they were in unfamiliar territory and anything might happen. Maybe, since his cynicism had been shaken already by Belle’s case, he was reading much more into what Ella had said about her than he ordinarily would.

“Mr Gold, are you drinking my whisky without me?”

Ella came back into the room and grabbed a tumbler from the drinks cabinet, holding it out to Gold who dutifully poured her a measure. Ella looked unimpressed and he added another glug.

“Much better. Now, what’s going on in that head of yours? You look like a wet weekend, and I specifically invited you here to have a good time.”

Gold sighed. “I just feel like I have no idea what I’m doing anymore. This case has got me at a complete loss. I’ve never seen anything like it before, and the fact that it seems to be tied up with my own family means that I can’t take a step back like I ought to.”

“Something tells me that it’s far too late for you to take a step back even if you wanted to,” Ella said sagely. “You know I can’t tell you if you’re one of the ones that Belle will love in her lifetime,” she continued. “It’s not that exact a science even when you believe in it.”

“I don’t, I mean, I’m not…”

“You care very deeply about her,” Ella said. “I don’t need mad psychic powers to see that, it’s blatantly obvious to everyone. Maybe you’re not in love with her yet, but what you feel goes beyond just wanting to help her for her sake. But you have romantic feelings for her and you can’t deny it.”

Gold nodded. “You’re right, I can’t.”

“If it helps, it definitely looks like she feels the same way.”

“I know. Everything’s just so strange and up in the air at the moment. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. This seems like the worst time in the world to begin a new relationship but if I don’t take the bull by the horns now then I don’t know when I will.” He sighed. “Then a part of me wonders if perhaps none of this is real.”

Ella raised an eyebrow. “I’m really not sure I follow there.”

“What if I’m only attracted to her because she’s a puzzle I can’t solve? What happens when I do then get to the bottom of the mystery?”

“Ah.”

They fell into silence for a while, sipping their whisky, and Ella held out her tumbler for a top up.

“I can’t help you there,” she said. “All I can do is tell you to be careful. Both for your sake and hers. Maybe it is due to outside influence. To you, she’s a broken bird that you want to fix, a puzzle you want to solve. And to her, you’re the magnificent saviour who’s going to rescue her from the thing that’s been plaguing her for her entire life. In those circumstances I don’t think it’s unusual for feelings to develop. I’m not going to stop you, God knows you need some happiness and companionship in your life. But the relationship needs to be healthy.”

“We do talk about things that are not the case,” Gold says. “In fact, most of our conversations steer about as far away from that as possible.”

“Well, that’s a positive start,” Ella said. “Relationships need to be built on more than just one common interest. If you’re getting to know each other as people outside of this one thing that connects you, then you’ll probably be ok. But be prepared for your relationship to change as your circumstances do. Things are going to change soon. There are going to be dangers and choices to face.”

“Ella, you know I don’t believe in your cards, as beautiful as they are. People see in them what they want to see. Does the Tower really represent liberation or did you just say that to make Belle feel better?”

Ella raised one thick eyebrow.

“Rum, I never lie about the meanings of the cards. They can be interpreted in so many ways that people can take whatever they want from them. Yes, the Tower really represents liberation in among all the other darker meanings, because so often liberation comes at a price and there is some kind of danger or sacrifice involved in obtaining it, which is why it coincides with crisis points. That’s how it all links together.”

Ella sighed. “Like it or not, and you know that this has nothing to do with cards or palms or my mother’s diaries, or whatever else that can be read to shed light on things, you have to accept that things are going to come to a head, probably sooner rather than later. Belle’s been living with this thing for her entire life, and for all that time it’s been trying to make its way back to you. Now it’s found you. It’s not going to waste time. Things will speed up, they will start to happen, and you are going to have to make choices soon enough, both of you. That’s why I’m imploring you to be careful in this relationship. You need to know where you both stand.”

Gold felt a sudden rush of ice in his veins.

“The Tower, danger, crisis, liberation… Do you think that Belle’s liberation will be death?”

They’d said  _at least it’s not death_ , but since the one thing that Ella had always pressed into him about tarot was that death rarely meant death and was more commonly associated with change, the death of an old life and rebirth into a new one, maybe death would have been a more welcome sight than the one that had actually met them.

“I don’t know,” Ella said. “It’s not that exact, and besides, I told you to leave the cards aside for the moment. You can’t claim not to believe in them and then start getting me to make future predictions for you based on someone else’s reading. Think about it logically. You need to find a way to get this thing out of Belle. I think you have to be prepared for the fact that there might not be a way.”

“If my father could get it out of him, then we can get it out of Belle,” Gold said stubbornly.

“Yes, but at what cost?” Ella pressed. “Some things shouldn’t be meddled with, Rum. I know you want to help her, I know you want to fix her, and I know deep down that a little part of you is blaming yourself for what’s happened to her as you think it’s your father’s fault. But that’s a dangerous road to go down, and you know it.”

“So what do you suggest I do?” Gold asked, exasperated.

“What I keep telling you to do. Tread carefully.”

It was foreboding advice, and as much as he hated to admit it, Ella was right. Cards or no cards, they were headed for a point of no return.


	22. Chapter 22

**Twenty-Two**

Ella was awake, and she wasn’t quite sure why. She could tell that something wasn’t quite right, and she didn’t know what it was, but it was making her feel distinctly uneasy. Perhaps it was the fact that it was the middle of the night and all the strange things that she’d seen and thought about throughout the day time were now creeping up on her and making her nervous when she’d not given them a second thought whilst it was light. Darkness was funny like that, twisting and warping everything that had been benign in the daylight into something that was a cause for concern.

Gold had not told her the full story of precisely what was going on between him and Belle and how Belle’s problems were connected with his own family tree, but from what he had told her and from what she had gathered from Belle, it was a deep and delicate connection. Whatever affliction Belle was suffering under - they would call it sleepwalking for ease of understanding although Ella knew that it was more than that - had affected her for her entire life and she was desperate to be free of it. Desperate enough to go to Gold, of all people.

Perhaps that was what was making her uneasy. Belle was definitely desperate. Desperation in and of itself was not worrying, and Ella had met more than enough desperate people seeking reassurance in the supernatural during her secondary career. At the same time though, the fact that Gold had been the one to approach her was strange.

She’d joked about it at the time, laughing about how desperate they must be if they were coming to her rather than using any of Gold’s tried and tested scientific methods, coming back to things that he had always privately scorned instead. But that desperation was genuine, and if Gold had resorted to coming to Ella, then what on earth were they dealing with that was beyond the scope of his knowledge?

She shook herself, getting out of bed and determining to make sure that everything was all right in the house. She knew that she would never get to sleep unless she checked, so she grabbed her robe and padded out onto the landing.

She almost jumped out of her skin when she saw the pale figure standing there, before realising that it was Belle and calming down with a sigh of relief. She was standing outside the door to Gold’s room, and Ella just smiled to herself. Maybe she had misjudged the relationship between them and they were further along in it than she’d thought.

She was about to go back into her own room, assured that nothing strange was going on, when she realised that Belle wasn’t moving. She was just standing there, her hand on Gold’s door handle, as still as a statue.

Sleepwalking, Ella thought. She’d never dealt with anyone who sleepwalked before. Were you supposed to leave them be or wake them up? She really didn’t want to leave Belle standing out there on the landing all night, she’d freeze.

Cautiously, she took a few steps down the landing. Belle didn’t seem to be responding to her presence, and Ella had to wonder. Whatever it was that connected her and Gold had been tracking him down throughout the country, to the extent of reaching his garden. Now she was only separated from him by an unlocked door, and yet she wasn’t going through it.

“Belle?” Ella whispered. “Belle, can you hear me?”

There was no response, and Ella came closer, until she could reach out and touch Belle’s shoulder. She was cold to the touch, but she still didn’t react.

“Belle?”

Cautiously, Ella shook her a little, but there was still no reaction. Ella’s brow furrowed; she wondered if perhaps she could get Belle back down the landing to her own room and no-one would be any the wiser.

“Belle, are you awake? Are you in there?”

Ella thought of the cards that she had drawn, of the Devil in Belle’s past that had plagued her since long before she was born. She thought of what Gold had told her, and the links to Malcolm and the missing piece of his soul. She thought of the faint extra life line on Belle’s palm, and she shivered. What was going on here was something far out of Ella’s remit, something that she had never encountered before.

Belle shivered then, taking in a deep, long breath, as if she had not been breathing before. Ella was fairly certain that she had been, otherwise she’d have lost consciousness, but all the same, that big gulp of air was not exactly encouraging considering the state that she was in. She turned to Ella, blinking, complete and utter confusion evident in her face.

“What happened?” she asked. “Where am I?”

She glanced around her surroundings as she came back to herself, and realisation seemed to dawn.

“I think that maybe you’d better go back to bed,” Ella said gently, but Belle shook her head.

“No. No, I need to stay awake now. If it can get this close, then it’s not safe for me to be off my guard.” She sighed. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

“I don’t think it was you. I just got a funny feeling.”

“Yeah.” Belle smiled grimly. “That was probably me.”

Ella made the executive decision that a night cap was definitely in order, all convention be damned.

“Come on,” she said. “I think you could do with a drink. And if you couldn’t, then I definitely could, and if you want to stay awake then I can think of no better way than by imbibing copious amounts of coffee. I’ll have whisky and you’ll have coffee and we can forget that this strange little conversation on the landing ever happened. With any luck Gold’s still blissfully unaware in the land of nod and won’t be joining us and drinking all the booze.”

In spite of being so obviously shaken, Belle gave a soft laugh and followed Ella down the stairs into the kitchen, gratefully accepting the blanket that the other woman fished out for her.

“Can you not remember what happens at all when you drift like that?” Ella asked as she made the coffee.

“No, it’s always just a blackout. I’ve had a little success with hypnotherapy for recovering some of the memories, but then I just blackout whilst under hypnosis as well. I don’t know what’s going on. Rum’s seen me in those induced blackouts, he probably knows more about what’s happening than I do. I just… This is different, this time. I’ve always wandered towards him, but this is the closest I’ve ever got, and it makes me wonder why I stopped short. Is it because the goal is different? Maybe it doesn’t want to get to him after all. Or is it something that I’m doing subconsciously to try and control this thing because I know what’s at stake now and I don’t want Rum to get hurt.”

Ella brought two mugs over and offered Belle a slug of whisky in hers; she declined.

“Do you know what it is?” she asked.

“No. I just know that it’s sharing my mind and it’s connected with Rum in some way. We’re trying to find out exactly what it might be. Joseph and Rum think I’m possessed. After seeing the Devil in my past this evening, I can’t say I entirely disagree. I don’t really know anything about it; it’s not like it tells me things. A couple of times I’ve woken up with vague impressions, but that’s it. That’s why it’s strange that it’s come so close to its goal today and pulled up short. If I am fighting it subconsciously, then that gives me the hope that I can fight it consciously as well, but the whole thing about the subconscious is that you don’t know you’re doing it. How on earth am I meant to work out if I’m fighting this thing if I can’t remember what I’m doing to it?”

“I’m sure you’ll get there in the end,” Ella assured her, although she didn’t feel all that reassuring at that moment in time, having witnessed Belle’s strange blackout first hand. Still, one of them had to be optimistic and she didn’t think that Gold would take too kindly to her being a morbid doom-monger when he had ostensibly brought Belle down here to have a good time.

“Yeah.”

They fell into silence for a while, not uncomfortable but certainly heavy and brooding, both of them mulling over the events of the night.

“Ella,” Belle began presently, “when you found me outside Rum’s door, did I look… normal?”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Did I look… I don’t know… Did I look possessed?”

Ella raised an eyebrow. “I’m not entirely familiar with what possessed people look like, but you looked pretty normal from where I was standing. I didn’t get a close look at your face, but your profile seemed normal. A bit blank, but normal.”

“Right.” Belle’s brow was still furrowed, and it made Ella slightly nervous.

“Shouldn’t you have been?”

“No. Yes. No, I don’t know. I’ve never really been in a position whereby people have seen me while I’ve been absent. Sheriff Humbert found me in the road and he said that there was something strange about me, it made him uneasy.”

“I was slightly unnerved by just how still and unresponsive you were, but you didn’t look strange,” Ella said.

“Right. My dad’s the only other one who’s seen me whilst I’ve been absent and he wouldn’t talk about it. Whatever he saw really shook him, more than the sheriff I think. So it just makes me wonder what was different this time round.”

Ella gave a snort of laughter. “Maybe I just have a stronger constitution than the both of them.”

“That’s probably it.” Belle raised her mug and chinked it against Ella’s. “Here’s to women, far less easily scared than the menfolk.”

They were both chilled into silence by the sound of a door opening upstairs and footsteps coming closer. It was Rum, it had to be. There was no other person it could be and there was no other explanation, so Ella didn’t know why she was feeling so nervous. After everything that had happened already that night though, she thought that she could be forgiven a little unease.

“We must have woken him up after all,” Belle said, but her voice was weak and there wasn’t much humour in it. “Maybe he smelled the coffee.”

“More likely the whisky.” Ella snorted.

The kitchen door opened and Rum entered, stopping short when he saw that the room was already occupied.

“Oh.”

Ella and Belle looked at each other.

“Well, I think that rules out us waking him up,” Ella said. “Are you all right there, Rum? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I have,” he muttered, coming over and sitting down with them, grabbing the whisky bottle as he went past. Ella swung around in her seat to face him.

“What’s going on, Rum?” she asked. “Not that I don’t enjoy drinking till three in the morning with you, but it usually involves a lot more laughter and a lot less of everyone seeing ghosts.”

Gold poured himself a measure and took a sip.

“I saw something tonight that I haven’t seen in a very long time,” he said. “Something that I had almost convinced myself had been a figment of my imagination. I’m trying very hard to re-convince myself that it’s all a figment of my imagination.” He paused. “What’s going on with you too? Should I be worried that you appear to be conspiring in the middle of the night?”

There was no humour behind it; none of them were in the right frame of mind and all attempts at lightening the mood fell flat.

“I blacked out and wandered,” Belle said eventually. “Ella found me on the landing.”

Gold was silent for a long time, staring into the depths of the whisky bottle and pointedly not looking at either of the ladies.

“I think we can finally rule out any chance that your and my supernatural experiences are unrelated,” he said eventually. “Belle, you remember what I told you about the shadows I saw when I was younger, just after I’d come to America?”

Belle nodded. “Their appearance and disappearance coincided with your father leaving and his death. Do you think… Are they connected to me as well?”

Gold inhaled sharply.

“I saw the shadow outside the window tonight,” he said. “It was the first time in almost fifty years that I’ve seen it. I don’t know what to make of it; it’s not like I’ve been seeing it ever since you arrived in town and came into my life, so it can’t be that obvious a connection. But the fact you wandered tonight, and that fact I’ve seen it again, well, it does make me wonder.”

“Do you think it might be protecting you?” Ella suggested. “Belle was outside your door, but she didn’t go through it. Might the shadow be preventing her coming any closer?”

Gold shrugged.

“It’s possible.”

“But you don’t think it’s likely,” Ella finished for him.

“Well, it still gave me the same fear that it did when I was seven,” Gold admitted. “There’s something about it that doesn’t exactly give an impression of benevolence.”

The three of them fell into silence again, unnerved by the events of the night but nonetheless reassured by the presence of the others. Safety in numbers, Ella supposed. None of them could understand what was going on; they could only hope that together, the three of them and Joseph would be able to find a solution, and fast.

 


	23. Chapter 23

**Twenty-Three**

There was a clarity in Joseph’s mind that had not been there for a very long time. It was like seeing the light after a lifetime in the darkness, only the grand revelations that were settling themselves into place weren’t anything incredibly important regarding life, the universe and everything, but more just the details of Belle’s case.

Having a slightly better idea of what he was looking for, his second trip to Scotland was proving much more fruitful than the first. Clues were popping up all over the place and they were all pointing towards the same conclusion. Not necessarily a happy conclusion, but a conclusion nonetheless. There were still some gaps that he was going to need Belle to fill in for him, but he was almost certain that the information she provided would support his hypothesis.

It was coming up to closing time and soon the librarians would be coming around to kick him out of the place, but he needed to gather as much information as he could so that he could continue his research into the evening. He was on a roll now, with all the jigsaw pieces slotting into place; he didn’t want to stop, not when he knew that he was so close to finding an answer that could hopefully help Belle.

He skimmed a finger down the huge, very old reference book that he had been poring over for the last couple of hours, finally finding the entry that he hoped would help him out.

_Blood malediction_.

Maledictions and curses had been tied up together since the dawn of time, ever since magic and witchcraft and the supernatural had first started to come on the scene and make themselves known.

_Blood maledictions are long-standing curses that are passed on through a pure, unbroken bloodline. They are among the worst and most difficult to break of maledictions as their origins are often far back in the subject’s past and they can lie dormant for generations before presenting symptoms._

_In modern medical terms, blood maledictions are usually the result of congenital diseases passed down through families on the recessive gene that will only present in certain family members with the correct gene combination._

He really needed to speak to Belle about her family’s medical history, if she knew it. The key was in the blood. The entity had said that the bloodline was broken, and a blood malediction was passed on through an unbroken bloodline. If they treated the entity in the same way as a blood malediction, some kind of curse that was linked to a family and could present at various points, then there had to be a way for the entity to have jumped from Malcolm’s blood into Belle’s. Her aunt was the key.

It wasn’t exactly the same, and Joseph knew that. There were variables to consider because they were dealing with an entity that could think and talk for itself, rather than an inanimate curse that just did what it was supposed to do. The entity was canny and it had its own agenda.

“Sir, the library is closing, you’re going to have to leave now please.”

The librarian had been hovering behind him, and her voice made him jump, perhaps more unnerved than he might ordinarily have been as a result of the things he had been reading about all day.

Joseph closed the book and gathered up his papers, leaving to get back to the small bed and breakfast where he was staying. He had a wealth of information at his fingertips now; the question was going to be making sure that they all fitted together in the way he thought they were going to. Once he knew the entity’s past, then surely he would be able to find a way to defeat it.

He fished his timeline sheets out of the bottom of his overnight bag and spread them out on the bed. This was it, he was nearly there. What he really needed now was to contact Belle and get her to confirm the things that he had no way of knowing.

It all came down to the blood.

Joseph opened his laptop and waited impatiently for it to connect to the wifi that he’d paid a fortune to be able to use. He was sure that there were plenty of places in the city where he could get it free, but the kind of conversations he was going to be having probably weren’t best suited to public areas.

Gold and Belle were both showing as online, which made Joseph think that they weren’t together, wherever they were. There’d been some conversation about them going to visit one of Gold’s old contacts in Boston and he wondered how that trip had gone. With everything else that had happened across the Atlantic in recent weeks, he was very glad that he wasn’t there. It seemed to be far more trouble than it was worth, but at the same time, a small part of him still had that thrill of the chase and wanted to be closer to the action. Perhaps it was the fact that he was actually making headway now instead of banging his head against a metaphorical brick wall. Now he had clues and theories and it almost felt like old times again. Despite most of him wanting to be as far away from all the mysterious goings on as possible, a small part of him kept telling himself that he would probably get on better if he was closer to the source of it all and could talk to Belle and Gold whilst all three of them were in the same time zone.

Joseph paused before making contact with either of the others, tapping his fingers on the keyboard as he wondered how to phrase what it was that he needed to ask. He had to give a wry smile; over the past couple of weeks it seemed that his and Gold’s roles from their old partnership were gradually being reversed, with Gold now going for more supernatural methods of solving things and Joseph resorting to the scientific.

Gold was right in that a lot of what had been thought of as paranormal or mystical in the past could be explained by simple science today, and that was precisely the conclusion that he had come to from his findings today.

Finally he tapped out a message to Gold, deciding that going straight in with the awkward questions was probably the best way.

_I believe I’ve had a breakthrough. What blood type are you?_

There was a long pause before Gold’s reply came.

_And a very good afternoon to you too, Joseph. AB negative. How is that relevant?_

Joseph resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

_You have an entity with an obsession with a broken bloodline and you, of all people, the one who looks for a scientific explanation in the most inexplicable of miracles, wonders why blood type might be relevant._

_All right, point taken._

_Do you know your father’s by any chance?_

_No. Although it’s likely to be the same; blood type comes from one of the parents and I think AB’s rare._

The theory was falling into place, and Joseph smiled.

_Is Belle with you?_

_No, she’s at home. We had an interesting time of it at Ella’s and I think it shook both of us a bit._

Joseph had to raise an eyebrow at that.

_Is everything all right or are we abandoning the case?_

_Everything’s fine, we just didn’t get a lot of sleep. Hold on a moment._

Joseph waited. The priesthood had taught him patience and it was something that he often had to employ, but that didn’t mean that he had to enjoy waiting for things.

Skype’s distinctive and annoying ringtone blared out of the laptop and Joseph answered it, waiting a few moments for the line to connect on the strained connection. It was a conference call, Belle and Gold both there in separate windows with him.

“I figured that this would be easier,” Gold said. “We can kill two birds with one stone this way. So, what have you found?”

“Steady on,” Joseph said. “I need to get some more information first, the theory is not complete. Hello Belle. How are you?”

She nodded. There were still dark circles under her eyes and Joseph wondered whether she would be getting any sleep any time soon. She looked a little better than the first time that he had seen her, in Dr Hopper’s office, but it was clear that there was something haunting her still, in more ways than the metaphorical.

“I’m ok,” she replied. “I’ve been better, but I’ve also been a lot worse. What information do you need?”

“Do you know your blood type?”

“Yes, AB negative. My mother always said it was important for me to know because it was a rarer one.”

Joseph nodded. Gold had gone rather pale; he could already foresee the implications of this.

“AB negative is the rarest blood group,” Joseph continued. “Was your mother the same?”

“Yes.”

“And your aunt? The one who went to Scotland?”

Belle nodded. “Oh God,” she murmured, as the realisation became clear to her too. “When it talked about a bloodline, it meant it literally.”

“I have a feeling it might,” Joseph said. “I just have a couple more questions. Do you know if your mother or aunt ever had a blood transfusion before you were born?”

Belle shook her head. “I don’t know, I really don’t know all that much about my family’s medical history and like I said, my aunt died before I was born.” She paused, her brow furrowed in deep thought. “Yes. I think my mum might have done. She’d had a burst appendix when she was in her teens, they might have given her blood during the surgery for that.”

The final piece of the puzzle slotted into place, and Joseph cleared his throat.

“Well, that all ties in with what I’ve discovered. I don’t know how helpful this is going to be, but it establishes a timeline of events and I’m pretty sure that I know how the entity came to be with Belle.”

The other two looked at him anxiously, prompting him to go on, so he did.

“We’re working on the principle that Rum’s father managed to somehow remove the entity from himself in 1968, but didn’t fully succeed in removing it till 1972, which was when it left Scotland and to all intents and purposes, travelled to Australia with Belle’s aunt.”

He paused, looking down at his notes.

“Belle, your aunt lived in Glasgow between 1970 and 1972. In that time, she was living at the same address that Rum and his father had lived at before they went to America.”

As far as uncanny coincidences went, this one was taking the biscuit, but it was what tied the entire theory together.

“Go on.” Belle sounded a little choked, but earnestly wanted to hear more.

“I believe that when Malcolm untethered the entity, however he did it, it was trapped in the house where the deed had taken place. It was searching for a new, perfect host, and it found that in your aunt. She and Malcolm had the same blood type. The entity lives through bloodlines. I think it’s safe to assume that if it loses its original host’s bloodline, then it will latch on to the closest match.”

“And since AB negative is the rarest blood type, it’s possible that no-one of that type lived in the place until Belle’s aunt,” Gold concluded.

Joseph nodded. “Yes. When Malcolm died in 1972, the entity became completely untethered and was able to leave the property, and it left with the person it had tethered onto in Malcolm’s bloodline’s absence.”

The three of them let that news sink in for a while.

“Do you think that this thing affected my aunt in the same way it does me?” Belle asked eventually.

“I think it’s likely, but then I guess your parents would have said something if they’d seen your symptoms before in another family member.”

Belle shook her head. “Dad never knew Aunt Meg, she died before he met Mum. She… When I said she died before I was born, it was quite a long time before I was born. It was a sudden illness, no-one’s really sure what it was, but the more I think about it, the more these things begin to click into place. Mum never mentioned Meg having shown symptoms of this thing though.”

The idea that the entity had somehow been responsible for Belle’s aunt’s death was a very chilling one, and it darkened the already sombre mood even further.

“I think I get it,” Belle said. “The entity latched onto Aunt Meg as the nearest match to the original bloodline. For whatever reason, it had trouble staying with her and she died, or maybe her death was completely unrelated. So it moved to the next nearest person in the new bloodline, which would be my mum. But because Mum had had a blood transfusion before it moved to her, the bloodline was tainted somehow, and therefore the entity didn’t present in Mum like it presents in me and may or may not have presented in Meg. When I was conceived with the same blood type, naturally it passed on to me. And having had more time to be established from conception, like it normally was, that’s why it’s causing me such problems and has such control over me.”

“Yes,” Joseph said. “That’s about the gist of it.”

“Right.” Gold seemed to be completely overwhelmed by this new glut of information that had been presented to him, suddenly giving an explicable and even pseudo-scientific reason. “We know how it came to be with Belle. The next question is how the hell do we get it out?”

Sadly, that was a question to which Joseph did not yet have an answer.

 


	24. Chapter 24

**Twenty-Four**

Things had been a little tense ever since they had returned from Ella’s place, and considering what had happened there, Gold didn’t really blame Belle for being reticent. Over the last couple of days he’d got the distinct impression that she had been avoiding him, but when he had called her this morning and asked her if she wanted to meet for dinner, she had agreed, so she obviously wasn’t going out of her way to avoid him entirely.

Gold took that to be a good sign. The conversation that they’d had at Ella’s, about taking a chance at finding love again, was an important one and it had had a profound effect on him. He had never really thought all that much about the future before; he’d never really had all that much reason to. It was only since Belle had come into his life that he had really started thinking past the end of the week.

Belle was sitting at their usual table in the diner when he found her. She was looking drawn and tired, but no more so than usual, and he wondered if she’d had any trouble with the entity over the last few days since her last episode down in Boston. She smiled when she saw him and waved him over, but there was less enthusiasm in her greeting than there had been before.

“Are you all right?” Gold asked once he was seated. Belle nodded, shook her head, and nodded again, before giving a long sigh.

“I don’t know,” she said simply. “It just feels like the universe is trying to spite me somehow. Every time I tell myself that I’m not going to let this Thing get the better of me and stop me from living a full and happy independent life, something happens to throw everything back into imbalance. Like at Ella’s the other day. We’d made the decision that we were going to see where this relationship took us, I’d made the decision to commit to something that was bigger than myself, something that would hopefully be good and positive and give me some hope for the future, and then a couple of hours later, well, we both know what happened.” She gazed out of the window into the middle distance, not looking at anything except maybe towards the future she felt destined never to be able to have. “I can’t believe that the entity taking control and leading me to you, and your shadow reappearing after so many years absence, are unrelated.”

Gold had already come to the same conclusion, but there wasn’t a lot that he could do about it until they found out what it was that was sharing Belle’s brain. They knew how it had got there, but they still didn’t know what it was there for or what it would do once it found its true bloodline host again. It was a dark and malevolent spirit; Gold’s encounters with it whilst Belle had been under hypnosis had more than proved that. But was it only like that because it had been separated from its bloodline?

He really needed to get on and do some more research into it; he realised that he had been leaving Joseph to do all of the work over in Scotland whilst he focused on the more pressing matters to hand, namely Belle’s day-to-day wellbeing. But if there was anything that he could do to help his friend in their mission, then he really ought to start doing it. Especially as he had Belle on hand to help him with whatever bits of knowledge she might have gleaned from a lifetime of living with this entity. There could be all sorts of things that she had not really thought about and had accepted as part of her everyday life that were in fact clues to her ultimate salvation.

He reached out across the table and took Belle’s hand.

“I meant what I said at Ella’s,” he said earnestly. “I want to do this.”

“Are you sure?” Belle asked. “After everything that happened?”

Gold nodded. “What about you? Do you want to give it a try still?”

“More than anything.” She sounded so lovelorn and desperate, and Gold’s heart went out to her. He couldn’t fathom what it must be like to have been so unable to form lasting, meaningful relationships due to something that was completely out of her control.

“Then I suggest that we just take each day as it comes and we carry on like any normal dating couple. That there’s a strange entity in the mix is just one of those little hiccups.”

Belle gave a huff of laughter. There was a smile in her eyes and her mirth seemed genuine, and she did not let go of his hand.

“I think that this might be slightly bigger than one of those little early dating hiccups,” she said. “But maybe if we stop giving the thing any more attention than absolutely necessary, it’ll get bored and leave us alone. We can use the same philosophy as a misbehaving child.”

It was strange to think of the entity as something childish and attention-seeking, but it did help to make it seem less scary and unknown. Not that diminishing its very obvious power was going to be a sensible idea in the long run, not when they had very real proof of what it could do to Belle. But for now, whilst they were trying to get their waking lives in order, the only way to banish fear for a little while was to laugh at it.

Gold would be lying if he said that he was completely at ease and didn’t think that anything at all was going to go wrong, but Belle’s case had renewed something in him that he had not felt since he had been working full-time on cases before. He was going to get to the bottom of it all no matter what it took, because it was Belle’s and his own happiness that was on the line.

He thought back to Ella’s sage words of advice, about treading carefully. They probably ought to take things slowly and carefully, and keep the case separate from their dating lives, but at the same time, there were things that he wanted to test, certain hypotheses that would by necessity bring them closer together.

The topic of the entity was put aside by mutual consent as their food arrived, and they turned to much safer areas of conversation, acting like any normal couple out for a casual dinner date. They still received the odd stares, perhaps more now that news of Belle’s sleepwalking escapades was spreading around the town. All too soon though, it was time for the evening to come to a close. Gold offered her his arm as they walked back towards the library in the twilight. If he was going to mention his plan to her, then it would have to be now or else he wouldn’t be able to go through with it.

“Belle, I’ve had an idea for a little experiment and I wonder if you would be agreeable to it.”

Belle stopped on the steps up to the apartment above the library and looked at him curiously.

“What kind of experiment would that be?” she asked.

“I was thinking about what happened at Ella’s, and the last time that you sleepwalked towards me here in Storybrooke.”

“Rum…” Belle began, shaking her head, but Gold held up a hand.

“Please just hear me out. If you don’t want to go ahead with it then that’s fine and I won’t mention it again, but I think that it could really help us try and work out what’s going on in your head, and it would be safer for you in the long run.”

Belle looked at him for a long while, her expression unreadable, but then she gave a slow nod.

“All right. What’s your experiment idea?”

“If you sleep at my house,” Gold said. “In your own bedroom,” he added hurriedly on seeing Belle’s eyebrow quirk. “No funny business, nothing like that.”

Well, unless she wanted that, in which case Gold would be happy to oblige, but he didn’t add that thought on. His mouth was already running away from him in his haste to try and get the explanation out, and he didn’t want to make matters any worse.

“I just thought that if we were in the same place, then if the entity turns up again then you don’t have to go outside to seek me out, and we can see if the same thing happens that happened at Ella’s. We can see if the shadow turns up again.”

Belle was silent for a moment, then a little smile curled at the corner of her mouth.

“It seems like a sound idea,” she said. “Although, you do remember what I said the first time that we met, right? Back in that bar on the edge of town.”

Gold racked his brains and thought back. It hadn’t been too long ago when he had seen Belle for the first time, but so much had happened in the intervening weeks that it felt more like a distant memory.

“The only good thing about living alone as that I don’t wake anyone up when I start screaming in the middle of the night,” Belle echoed quietly. “It’s not just the entity getting up and having a wander about that you’ll have to deal with,” she added. “It’s been giving me nightmares for as long as I can remember.”

Gold nodded. “I think that I can deal with that.”

“Well, if you’re sure, then it would be an interesting experiment to try out.” She fished her keys out of her purse. “Do you want to come up whilst I pack a bag?”

Gold followed her up into the apartment. It was a little while since he had last been in there, collecting clothes for her after her wandering had led her to the hospital. The place seemed a lot neater, and there were no signs of any more questions tacked up to the doors.

“I think that Joseph’s decided that talking to the thing directly is probably more useful than getting messages second-hand in languages that he can’t read,” Belle said. “I still wonder what all of it means.”

Gold remembered one of the more chilling messages that the entity had given them.

_They knew I was coming and they shut me out._

He wished he knew what it meant and whether the ‘they’ that had shut the entity out had done the right thing or not.

Presently his eyes alighted on a rather alarming sight; a pair of handcuffs on the sideboard. He was still looking at them nervously when Belle came out of the bedroom, a small duffel bag thrown over her shoulder.

“I was considering handcuffing myself to my bed,” she said, following his line of sight. “I thought that might be fraught with danger if I somehow lost the key, though. And knowing how canny the Thing can be, it probably wouldn’t have worked to stop it anyway.”

Considering that the entity had walked Belle on broken glass in the middle of the night to try and get to where it wanted to go, Gold really didn’t think that it would have any qualms in dislocating or breaking her wrist to get free of a pair of cuffs, and he was very glad that she had decided against that plan.

“All right, I’m ready.”

If anyone in the town was at all curious about Belle and Gold walking down the street together in the direction of Gold’s house, with Belle very obviously going to stay overnight, then they didn’t show it. Whilst they were definitely the centre of gossip in the town for various reasons, it was nice to know that to their faces at least, the townsfolk had some semblance of standards.

Gold let them into the house and switched the lights on. “Make yourself at home.”

He realised that it was only the second time that Belle had been inside his house, although he had been round to hers many more times during the course of their investigation, and he left her to wander and explore the place whilst he went to get the guest room ready. He had visitors so rarely – well, never actually – that it was never just ready and waiting for someone to drop in, and he would have to search for the spare pillows and blankets.

“Is there anything I can do?” Belle asked. “I feel bad just lounging around in your home whilst you’re doing all the work.”

“Well, it was my idea,” Gold said. “I should probably have got prepared before you came, but I didn’t want to seem too presumptuous.”

And partially because he’d only thought up and thought through the idea on the way to the diner to meet her. It had been a spur of the moment decision, but the more he had thought about it, the more sense it had made.

Belle came in and began putting pillow cases onto the pillows as Gold spread out sheets and blankets. It was such an ordinary scene of domesticity that he had to stifle a laugh. The thoughts of domesticity, unfortunately, led to some slightly less savoury ones, as the image of pushing Belle back onto the fresh sheets and making love to her came into his head unbidden.

He looked away with a cough, and from the slight colour rising in Belle’s cheeks, he was pretty sure that she had been thinking something along the same lines.

Maybe having her sleeping in his house was going to be a bad idea for reasons entirely unrelated to the entity.


	25. Chapter 25

**Twenty-Five**

Gold lay awake, staring up at the ceiling. No matter what he tried, he just couldn’t make sleep come, and he wondered if he’d managed to completely jinx himself. Knowing his luck, everything would go smoothly tonight and there would be no disturbances of any kind, be they shadows at his window or anything to do with Belle. He was incredibly aware of the fact that he was only a few short steps down the corridor from her, and he wondered if she was having the same trouble dropping off as he was.

It wasn’t like this was the closest they’d ever been. They’d slept this close to each other when they’d been staying at Ella’s, but it had been different there. They’d both been guests, and there wasn’t anything else going through Gold’s head at the time. Now that he was in his own home, he couldn’t stop his thoughts wending in Belle’s direction, wondering if she was all right, if she was comfortable, if she was asleep, if the entity had decided to take over.

He didn’t really know what he would do if the entity did decide to take over, but there was something in the back of his mind that told him there might be the chance to talk to it and get some straight answers for once. He had no idea what he needed to ask, Joseph was the expert in those matters and he couldn’t exactly ask his friend for advice now. Hopefully the right questions would pop into his head and even if they didn’t, hopefully there would be at least some useful knowledge gleaned.

Gold closed his eyes. If the entity didn’t appear, then it really wasn’t the end of the world. A snide part of his brain told him that he ought to be happy if it didn’t work because that meant Belle would have to stay over again so that the experiment could be repeated. As much as Gold liked the thought of spending more time with Belle, his primary concern was that Belle got a good night’s sleep. If this was what it took for her not to be exhausted all the time, then so be it.

Giving a long sigh, he turned over to face the window and looked at the sliver in the drapes that he’d left open purposefully. As strange as it seemed to him to be inviting the shadow like this, he needed to make sure that he could see it if it did approach him. He didn’t like the idea of waking up to the hairs on the back of his neck alerting danger, and then opening the curtains to find himself face to face with his nemesis. If there were going to be any shadows today then he wanted to be prepared.

There was nothing, and there was no sound or movement from the rest of the house either. Whatever had happened at Ella’s perhaps there was hope that it was an isolated incident. Perhaps there was the very slim hope that the shadow and Belle’s episodes weren’t related at all.

There again, he’d always associated the shadow with his father, and now that they knew how his father had ended up transferring the entity to Belle through proxy, there was the distinct possibility that it was all linked. The shadow had haunted Rum during the time when it had not been completely untethered from their bloodline.

_They knew I was coming and they shut me out._

Rum sat bolt upright in bed as the full extent of that sentence from the entity finally became clear, and he looked over at his aunts’ journals on the nightstand beside him. It was the one thing that had made him feel safe when he had been haunted, the knowledge that no matter what was outside the house, it couldn’t get in because Aunt Miriam and Aunt Elvira had cast a circle of protection around their home.

The shadow had been looking for him, just as the entity was looking for him with Belle. It had been untethered from Malcolm somehow, but it still retained the link to the bloodline strongly enough to be able to track down Gold, knowing that he was next in line.

_They knew I was coming and they shut me out._

The aunts had shut out the entity with their protective circle. Now more than ever, Gold was convinced that the entity was malevolent. If his aunts knew to shut it out, then it ought to be shut out. They’d only ever had his welfare as their foremost priority and they wouldn’t have shut out something that would have been harmless to him.

And naturally, once Malcolm died and the spirit was untethered completely, it could use more direct and ambulatory methods to try to find its next host.

It didn’t explain why the shadow had appeared at Ella’s, but it explained a lot of other things, so Gold decided to run with it. He went over to the window and peered out, but there was no sign of anything untoward, and he toyed with closing the curtains.

Just before he could make a decision, however, a horrible, blood-curdling scream rang through the house from Belle’s room. She certainly wasn’t kidding when she’d said about waking people up with her screaming.

The curtains were gone from his mind in an instant, and he grabbed his robe from the end of the bed, racing down the corridor as fast as his legs could take him. Even if it was only a nightmare, the sound that she was making was absolutely terrifying. Gold had encountered a lot of things in his time, but never anything quite as scary as that scream. As he reached her door, it cut off suddenly, and he felt his blood turn to ice in his veins.

She’d warned him that she screamed at night. She’d told him that she had nightmares when the entity didn’t take over. He knew that theoretically, it was a higher chance that it was one of those things than it was something sinister. Something in the back of his mind was setting off alarm bells, telling him that perhaps this was some kind of trick on the entity’s part to get him off guard and in a false sense of security, and any moment now Belle would jump out from behind the door, but he shook the thought away, grabbing the door handle and opening it just a crack, at the same moment as the bedside light came on.

Belle gave a short, sharp screech as she saw the door open, before realising that it was only Gold outside and letting out a long sigh of relief, clutching her heart.

“Sorry I scared you,” he said.

Belle just scoffed. “All things considered I think it’s more likely that I scared you.”

Gold opened the door a little wider so that they could have a proper conversation.

“Are you all right?”

She was sitting up in bed, arms resting on her knees, scraping her tangled hair back from her face. There were beads of perspiration on her forehead, and her face was flushed from its usual pallor. She nodded.

“Yeah. Just a nightmare. I’ll be all right. I’m sorry I woke you.”

Gold shrugged. “It’s no matter. I was awake anyway, and it isn’t like you didn’t warn me that this might happen.”

Belle gave a little twitch of a smile.

“I guess it’s better than sleepwalking,” she said. “Although, you know, it might not be.”

They fell into silence, neither of them really knowing what they ought to do next. Gold was hovering in the doorway and Belle was hugging her knees, rocking herself gently as she stared over at the window. Finally she looked over at Gold and patted the bed beside her.

“If you’re ok with it,” she said. “I mean, you can go back to bed if you’d rather, but you said that you were awake anyway, and I find…” She broke off and sighed. “When I used to have the really bad dreams when I was younger, my mum and dad would always encourage me to talk them out and tell someone what had happened in the dream. They said that talking it out would get the nightmare out of my head and it wouldn’t happen again. I don’t know how much it actually worked, but it made me feel better at the time. Would you mind?”

Gold came over and settled himself on the other side of the bed beside Belle.

“Of course not. So… What were you dreaming about?”

It took Belle a little while to reply.

“I was holding a knife,” she said. “There was blood on it, but I knew it was mine rather than anyone else’s. I wasn’t hurt though, so I don’t know how I knew it was mine. I was outside, it was dark, and there wasn’t anyone else about, but you know that feeling you get when the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end and you know that someone’s watching you? Well, I had that. I couldn’t see anyone, but I knew that there was someone there.”

She paused, picking at a loose thread on the blanket that covered her knees. Gold gave a little shiver not entirely due to the content of the strange dream that he was hearing, and Belle smiled.

“You can get under the covers if you want to keep warm, I don’t mind. It’s your bed after all.”

“It’s not really my bed. That’s down the hall.”

“Well, it’s a bed that belongs to you at any rate.”

Gold didn’t argue the point any more and slipped under the covers, returning his attention to Belle to hear the rest of the story.

“I started to run, because I knew that this thing, this whatever it was, was following me, and I wanted to get away from it. I had the idea that I could use the knife to defend myself, but then I couldn’t see what was following me so I didn’t know how I was going to be able to strike at it.”

Her hands stopped moving on the covers. “Then it got me. It was like a shadow, it just went straight through me, except it didn’t come out the other side. It was stuck. That’s probably when I started screaming.”

Gold took a moment to digest what he’d just heard.

“It sounds like you’re dreaming a metaphor for the entity getting into your mind,” he said. “Have you had a similar dream before?”

“I often dream about being chased,” Belle said. “But it’s never caught me before. Maybe my subconscious is using the knowledge we’ve gained from Joseph’s research to fill in the gaps.”

“It’s likely. Dreams are often constructed from the world around us. People who claim to have prophetic dreams are often just very in tune with their environment. They’ll dream about terrifying floods and two days later it’ll start to rain torrentially. It’s not psychic, they’re just very attuned to atmospheric pressure. You’re using pieces of what you know to create something in the hope of better understanding it.”

Belle snorted. “I don’t think that my brain’s doing a very good job of it, if I’m honest.” She paused for a long time, finding a new thread to occupy her fingers with. “The blood and the knife were new though. The blood I can sort of understand, we’ve kept talking about bloodlines all the time, and how this thing ends up in the bloodstream almost. But the knife… That was new, and I have no idea why I’d put that in there. It was a weird knife too, not a regular kitchen blade.”

“What did it look like?” Gold was intrigued now. If the entity had some kind of an influence in Belle’s dreams, then this knife might be a crucial clue in their current mystery.

“It looked like a Mason’s knife,” she said. “You know they have those ornamental knives with the wavy blades, they look a bit like letter openers. I’m sure that the Freemasons themselves wouldn’t be too happy with me comparing their knives to letter openers, but that’s the nearest thing I can come up with. It was a wavy blade, with an intricate pattern sort of engraved into it. I think that there were words on it but I can’t remember, I wasn’t really paying all that much attention. Too busy running away from the shadow.”

“It’s strange,” Gold agreed. “You never know, though. It might prove useful.”

Belle laughed. “I’m pretty sure that my dreams have never been useful for anything in the past except freaking people out. Mostly myself.”

She stretched her legs back down beneath the covers, leaning back and staring up at the ceiling. Her colour seemed to be returning to normal after her intense dream, and Gold thought that she looked a lot more peaceful than she had done when he had first entered the room.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thanks for listening. It really does make it better. Now that I’ve talked about it and I can think about it logically, it makes a lot more sense. I think it’s just my unconscious mind trying to process what’s happened to me and my family now that we have more of an idea of what that is. It makes sense now, but at the time… It’s just scary.”

“Any time,” Gold said. “If it makes you feel safe, then it’s worth every second of my time.”

Belle looked over at him and smiled, one of the most beautiful and earnest expressions that he had seen from her throughout their brief time together.

“You do make me feel safe,” she said. “Ever since you took me in when I crash landed in your garden, I’ve always felt safe with you. Whether or not you feel safe with me is another matter entirely.”

Gold nodded. “I don’t think that you’re going to hurt me.”

“I’m not going to do it intentionally…”

“I know. And I still don’t think that you’re going to hurt me. Think about what happened at Ella’s. Whatever was going on, it stopped. Either it stopped itself, or you stopped it. I think you might be stronger than you think when it comes to this entity, and you might just surprise yourself.”

He reached across, taking her hands in his and squeezing them tightly.

“You don’t scare me, Belle. This situation is very strange and very frightening, and I don’t mind admitting that the most frightening part is the fact that I have no idea what we’re dealing with. But you, yourself, Belle: I am not scared of you.”

Belle smiled, bringing his hands up to her lips and kissing his knuckles.

“Thank you. That really means a lot.”

They continued to talk for a while, about everything and nothing, the mundane topics that they resorted to whenever discussing the supernatural that surrounded the case became too much. Belle was definitely nodding, and Gold wondered if he ought to leave her to sleep. When she eventually drifted off against his shoulder, he decided that staying was probably a better idea. He made her feel safe, and if that was what it took for her to get a good night’s sleep, then he would gladly stay with her all night.


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that this chapter has taken the fic up to M rating.

When Gold woke the next morning he was somewhat disorientated at first. It had been so long since he’d shared a bed with someone that in his sleep-addled state he thought that he was still dreaming. Then the memories of the previous night returned, and he realised just how he had ended up in the spare bedroom rather than his own, and how come he had ended up spooned up behind Belle.

He hadn’t intended to get quite so close to her. He hadn’t intended to fall asleep again at all. Indeed, at the time when he had agreed to stay with her, he had been feeling very awake and didn’t think that he would sleep again for a long time. Belle’s screaming nightmare had shaken him, and even though she herself had no longer been feeling quite so disturbed by it, Gold couldn’t help sitting there in the darkness thinking about what the dream might mean.

Dreams were one thing that he’d never been exactly sceptical of, but had always taken with a pinch of salt. Being products of the subconscious as they were, he knew that they always had some kind of root in the subject’s mind and could be a valuable insight into what was going on in their heads, but being subconscious, there was often a great deal of parsing to be done before anything remotely logical could be gained from the nocturnal messages.

Belle’s nightmare could have meant all kinds of things, and he had to wonder at the significance of the strange knife. A part of him was tempted to write it off as her mind’s attempt to defend itself against the entity that was stalking her - although such a weapon would naturally be useless against a shade.

He had lain awake for a long time after Belle had drifted off into a deep and peaceful slumber and he’d reached across to turn her light off. He had intended to stay up and keep watch over her, ready to wake her from any nightmares that occur, and, if the opportunity arose, to witness and communicate with the entity itself should it choose to rear its head in the aftermath of her already troubled night.

When it came down to it though, the warm covers and the darkness and the soporific rhythm of Belle’s gentle breathing were too tempting, and he had succumbed to slumber.

And ended up curled around her, his chest pressed in close to her back, and to his horror, the lower half of his anatomy showing distinct interest in the proceedings. He would have groaned, but Belle was still asleep and after her broken night, he really didn’t want to wake her. Hopefully he would be able to extricate himself and leave her alone without her being any the wiser.

That was going to be easier said than done, though. Where his arms had pulled her close in the night, Belle’s hands had found his and she was holding onto him tightly.

She looked so peaceful like this. The shadows under her eyes had diminished a little, and the look of worry and exhaustion in her face had vanished. She had always been beautiful, but right now, without the fears of the world weighing down on her and without the entity at the back of her mind making her doubt her unconscious actions, she was radiant. There was a little smile playing over her lips, and Gold hoped that whatever she was dreaming of now was something pleasant and wholly mundane.

This was Belle as she would be had the entity never entered her life and she’d been allowed to live it as she should, and a little something inside Gold twisted in anger and guilt. It was his family that had done that to her; there wasn’t anything that he could have done to stop it but it was his father’s fault, whatever he had done.

This introspection wasn’t solving the problem of him and Belle having become entwined during the night, or the more pressing problem of his cock having betrayed him in his sleep. Something really needed to be done about that.

Presently Belle shifted in her sleep, coming out of the depths of it into the lighter slumber that would precede her waking, and Gold grimaced, because he knew that any movement he made now would jolt her into consciousness. He was stuck.

Belle shifted again, her shoulders giving a little shake as she came awake fully and stretched her spine, in doing so pressing back further against Gold’s morning glory. He briefly considered closing his eyes and trying to pretend to be asleep still, but that proved futile as Belle looked at him over her shoulder and gave him a sleepy little smile.

“Good morning.”

“Morning.” Now that she was awake, he chanced to try and roll away from her. “I’m, erm, sorry about all that.”

“Don’t be.” Belle let go her grip on his hands at last and turned over so that she was facing him. “I think I can safely say that’s the best night’s sleep I’ve had in a very long time, and I’m grateful for any sleep that I can get, especially of that quality.” She ran a hand through her messy curls and rested her head back on the pillow, looking up at him.

“I mean, it’s not like we’re not dating,” she said. “Maybe some people would say that it was a bit soon for bed-sharing, but I’m certainly not averse to the idea.”

There was a cheeky little smile on her face, and despite the embarrassment of the situation that he’d found himself in, Gold had to smile back. This, he felt, was the closest he had ever come to seeing the real Belle. Not that she wasn’t real during her waking moments when the entity had not taken over, but this was a bright new side to her. Perhaps his presence had kept the thing at bay for a while, and he had to wonder. It had been seeking out his bloodline, and now he was right here next to it. Maybe that had been enough to calm it for a while.

“All the same,” he began. “It’s still an interesting thing to wake up to.”

Belle shrugged. “You’re a guy. It happens.” She gave a yawn. “This bed’s very comfortable. Maybe that’s the secret. The entity keeps making me sleepwalk because I need a new mattress.”

“Do you think…” Gold began the thought, but he didn’t want to finish it. For all Belle seemed to have been fine with their nocturnal snuggling, it was a bit soon for him to be suggesting sharing a bed on a more regular basis to see if it had any lasting effect, even if he was only doing it for her wellbeing rather than any desire to get closer to her. There was definitely a desire to get closer to her though, no matter how pure his intentions might be. The reaction of his cock to sleeping next to her was enough to prove that.

“It’s still there, whatever it is.” Belle said, tapping her temple. “I’m sorry but I don’t think it was a miracle cure, but it was a good night’s sleep. So thank you for facilitating that. I guess your experiment failed though.”

The experiment? Oh yes. In all the excitement that had happened overnight, Gold had forgotten that he’d begun the evening with something else entirely in mind.

“We can try that again some other time,” he said. “I’ll, erm, I’ll go and make breakfast.”

He grabbed his robe and wrapped it tightly around himself to try and hide his erection. Breakfast would have to wait until after a cold shower.

X

When Belle came down the stairs and entered the kitchen, Gold could almost say that she looked like a new person. She seemed relaxed and refreshed, and even though she had previously said that she knew the entity was still there, it seemed to be at bay for the moment. The smile on her face was bright and genuine, and it was infectious.

“Would you like some tea?” Gold asked her. Belle nodded.

“That would be lovely, thank you.” She took a seat at the kitchen table and looked around. “You know, the first time I was in here, you were bandaging my feet.”

“Yes.” Gold didn’t want to be reminded of that first nerve-wracking interaction that the two of them had shared, not when he had almost managed to put the entity to the back of his mind and enjoy his time with Belle when she seemed so happy at the moment.

“I think you might have become my personal knight in shining armour at that point,” she said. “I know we’d spoken before, but I’d not held out all that much hope of you being able to help. I didn’t think that you would take me seriously.”

“Whether I believed in what you were saying or not, I knew that you believed it, and that’s half the battle. I knew that you weren’t trying to swindle me in some way, or set me up for a fool. The fact that you were looking for a real-world explanation rather than accepting a supernatural one made me think that there was something going on that was beyond explanation.”

Belle nodded, accepting the cup of tea gratefully and blowing on the surface to cool it to a drinkable temperature.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thanks for everything that you’ve done for me. I think you’ve gone above and beyond when it comes to all the investigation.”

“It’s my pleasure,” Gold said. “Honestly. I suppose I first took your case on because it intrigued me, and when I can’t explain something, I don’t tend to stop until I can find an explanation. And I guess that the deeper I dug into the mystery, and the more I found it related to me, well, I couldn’t let it go then.” He gave a self-deprecating smile. “I’m just as invested for my sake as I am for yours.”

“Just as long as you don’t feel a sense of responsibility for my current… condition,” Belle said. It was ironic how her words echoed the ones that Ella had spoken back at her place. “Whatever your father did to untether the entity from his bloodline, and however he chose to do it, it has nothing to do with you. It was just a series of unfortunate events that led it to rest with me. You shouldn’t feel guilty because of his actions.”

“I know. Ella said the same thing. It’s hard not to, though, when I see how much this has affected your entire life. I can’t begin to imagine the horrors you’ve been through, and how awful it must be to have bits of your life that you can’t account for and fear what you might have done during those blackouts.”

Belle reached across the table and cupped Gold’s cheek gently, giving him a soft smile.

“It’s not your fault,” she said firmly. “I don’t blame you for this, you need to know that. I don’t even blame your father, really. Well, not yet, at least. Perhaps Joseph’s research will throw up some interesting new facts. This isn’t something I’d wish on anyone and if he found a way to get rid of it, then I suppose that’s a good thing. Maybe he was trying to protect you, stop it passing through the bloodline to you.”

Gold wrinkled his nose, unconvinced. “For as long as I can remember, my father only ever had his own interests at heart. Whatever he did to unleash the entity, I don’t think that he was thinking of me at the time.”

“I suppose we’ll never know, so there’s no need to stew over it.”

Gold caught her hand where it was still pressed against his cheek, leaning into it and interlacing his fingers with hers.

“I find it truly remarkable how you can be so calm about all this,” he said. “It’s quite inspiring.”

“It’s only because I’ve had to learn to let go. I can’t change the past, God knows how much I want to. If I could turn back time and do things differently I would, but I know that no matter what I do, this darkness inside me will just keep going. It’s not going to leave me alone, and it wouldn’t have left me alone even if I could do my life over. The past is past, nothing we do here in the present can change it. I have to focus on surviving each day as it comes, or else I’ll go mad.” She gave a snort of laughter. “I’m already going mad. Constantly terrified and sleep-deprived, what a great combination.”

Gold reached out and pushed a stray strand of hair back behind her ear.

“I promise you that you’re not going mad,” he said, and on impulse, he leaned in to kiss her. It felt right. In that moment, it felt, well, normal. Two people in love kissing over the breakfast table. He wanted to make Belle feel better, and above all to convince her that she was not alone, and that they would face this unknown together.

Finally, Belle broke away from the kiss and smiled.

“Thank you, Rum.”

“My pleasure.”

She got up and came around the table, pulling up the chair next to him and tentatively resting her hands on his shoulders, leaning in for another kiss, a harder, more passionate one than they had shared before.

  
“I wanted to do that,” she said as she pulled away. “I thought it would be easier without the table in the way.”

Gold nodded and kissed her again. In the back of his mind, he could hear a voice that sounded like Ella’s warning him to tread carefully, and not to rush things or overdo them. He knew that they were moving quickly, probably more quickly than they should considering their precarious circumstances, but the memory of waking with Belle’s petite warm body in his arms was still fresh in his mind, and so was his reaction to it.

Belle was breathless when they finally broke the kiss, with a sparkle of vitality in her eyes.

“Maybe breakfast?” she said. There was almost disappointment in her tone; she seemed to want to keep going as much as Gold did, but he knew that the voice in the back of his mind was right.

Breakfast first, and then that might dampen their ardour a little. It wouldn’t do to throw caution to the wind just because they both wanted more. Once this was all over, they would have all the time in the world to kiss each other senseless, and then some.


	27. Chapter 27

There had been several moments over the last few days when Joseph had felt like he was holding onto the end of a very long piece of string, and the more he pulled at it, the longer and more tangled it seemed to get. Usually, untangling string was something of a cathartic process which would leave someone feeling calm and satisfied by the end of it, with a nice neat ball of string to show for it. No tangles, no unexpected swerves off in another direction that didn’t really make sense, and certainly no strange languages that hadn’t been spoken for several centuries.

Still, even though it felt like every discovery he made threw up a whole bunch more unanswered questions, at least he was actually making discoveries.

He’d probably also destroyed several rainforests in the process. He looked around himself at the sea of paper that was strewn around his flat, now covering almost every surface with loose leaf notes, printed and photocopied pages, and open books. The pile of abandoned research in the corner of his bedroom was now no more; it was all out and in use once more. A part of him found it invigorating to be back in the investigating game again; it had been work that he had enjoyed and dedicated himself to before everything had gone horribly wrong. Mostly he just found it confusing, the quagmire getting ever deeper and showing no signs of releasing him or becoming any less sticky.

Finally he reached over the piles of papers and grabbed the computer, opening up Skype to see if Belle or Gold were available. He didn’t have a lot to add to their case, but it was good to check in with them regularly to make sure that nothing catastrophic had happened across the pond whilst he had been blissfully unaware and continuing his research without knowing what horrors might be going on whilst he was asleep in a different time zone.

Gold was available.

_I’ve done some more research,_  Joseph typed.  _Are you available for a quick call?_

_Yes, nothing’s going on here. Belle’s with me too._

It was good to see Belle and Gold together again when the call finally connected. Whatever had happened to shake them up at Ella’s place had obviously been either put to the back of their minds or worked through in some way.

“So, what have you got this time?” Belle asked.

“Not a whole lot,” Joseph admitted. “After finding out how the entity had ended up with you, I tried to work out how Malcolm had managed to get it out of him in the first place, but I hit a brick wall there, because there are so many different ways to banish demons and spirits, and it all depends on what the entity actually is. From the questions we’ve already asked it, we know that it’s not something generic, it’s a specific entity and that means that whatever untethered it has to be specific as well. So, I decided that finding out what it actually is would be a better idea, and to that end, I started trying to find out who Nimue was.”

“Right.” Gold was leaning forward, intrigued and eager to learn more. “Nimue was the first of the bloodline, so presumably she’s one of my ancestors.”

“That’s a good assumption to make. I’ve been tracking down your family tree, Gold. You know, geneaology’s much more interesting when it’s somebody else’s.”

Gold rolled his eyes. He had always been the snarky and sarcastic one of their partnership and Joseph had to take whatever opportunities for terrible quips that he could. He didn’t get all that many these days.

“Anyway, there’s not a lot of superfluous information available,” Joseph continued, sensing that it would probably be best to get back to the point. “It’s mostly just names and dates and professions, there’s not all that much about medical history or anything like that. What bits and pieces I have been able to find show that there’s been a strong AB negative blood line as far back as the records show and it passes from first born to first born, usually along a male bloodline but there were a few ladies a bit further back.”

“Right. I don’t suppose you’ve been able to find out if any of my ancestors showed any symptoms similar to Belle’s?” Gold asked. “Maybe that’s the point. Maybe it didn’t show in my family and only presents in Belle because she’s not of the original bloodline.”

Joseph shook his head with a grimace.

“No. Unfortunately I think it presented in your family too. A very helpful librarian’s been helping me sort through archives and periodicals. There are a few accounts of people with the Gold name suffering from sleepwalking and strange seizures and fits. Mostly they’ve been attributed to epilepsy and other such neurological conditions, but I think we all know to take that with a pinch of salt.”

“Right.” Gold was silent for a moment, digesting that information. “Was there anything from further back? From before the advent of neuroscience when everyone thought of fits as being possessed by the devil?”

Beside him, Belle gave a snort of laughter. “Oh, the irony. For so many years, medical conditions were misdiagnosed as possession, and now we’ve got possession misdiagnosed as a medical condition.”

Joseph shook his head. “No, there’s nothing from that far back. There’s just one thing that keeps cropping up that seems to go back a very long time, to before there were records.”

“What’s that?”

“Has your family ever owned a ceremonial sword, Gold?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’ve found a few references to a ceremonial sword.” Joseph shrugged. “I just thought that it was interesting because I came across it more than once.”

Gold looked completely thrown for a while.

“No,” he said flatly. “No, I’ve never known anything about a ceremonial sword.”

“Well, that’s all I’ve got for you today, I’m afraid. I’ll keep looking. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a bit further back and finally find Nimue, and see if there’s anything about her and how she started the whole thing off.”

They continued to talk for a little while about everything that was going on; and Belle and Gold’s failed experiment to see if the entity would raise its head again. Joseph had to wonder if they’d try again tonight, and he couldn’t help thinking that perhaps Gold was tempting fate somewhat. Still, that wasn’t his problem. All he could do was try to help as much as he could from another country, so very far away.

He shook himself as he closed the call. He hadn’t even met Belle in person yet, and probably never would, and he was already getting far too attached to her and her case. Perhaps there was the slightest touch of jealousy there, that Gold was there with her in the middle of it and able to provide that comfort and shoulder to cry on.

Joseph pushed the thoughts of the unattainable to the back of his mind. Back to work.

X

Joseph was about to shut everything down for the night when Skype pinged with the arrival of a new message from Belle.

_Hi Joseph. I know it’s late over there but I only just got back from Rum’s place and I wanted to speak to you alone. Is it ok if I call?_

Joseph looked over at the clock. It wasn’t as if he had a lot to do the next day other than work on the case and uncover more about Gold’s family tree and any potential swords that may have found their way into it.

_Of course, go ahead._

She called less than a minute later, and Joseph could see the familiar surroundings of her apartment in the background. She was looking a lot more apprehensive than she had done during the earlier call, and Joseph wondered what the problem could be.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah.” Belle sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “I just need someone to talk to who’s not Rum but who knows what’s going on. Not that Rum’s not being great about the whole thing, but I… I’m just so scared that I’m going to hurt him somehow, that the entity’s going to get out and do something to him whilst we’re in such close proximity. We’ve got no idea what it wants and I don’t want to put him in danger, but at the same time, being with him makes me feel safe and it seems to make the entity calm down a bit.”

She took a deep breath. “Sorry, that was a long speech.”

“It’s best to get it off your chest,” Joseph said. “I wish I knew what to say to reassure you. This isn’t anything like anything I’ve come across before, so I can’t draw on years of experience to predict how it’s all going to go down.” He paused. “That wasn’t at all reassuring, was it?”

Belle gave a little huff of laughter. “Not really, no. But honesty’s always appreciated. I didn’t really come looking for reassurance, I just needed to get it off my chest, and I think you can understand why I didn’t want to go to Rum with it. I’m so grateful to him for everything he’s done, and I couldn’t bear it if something happened to him because of it.”

“Yes, I understand. You know, I’m only ever on the other end of the phone if you do want to talk about things with someone who’s not Gold. I mean, not always on Skype as there’s five hours between us, but I’ll give you my phone number. You can call any time.”

Belle smiled.

“Thank you. It means a lot. I’m so used to not talking to anyone about this for fear that they’ll think I’m crazy, but there have been times in the past where I think I’ll explode with the pressure of keeping it all inside. It’s good to know that there are people I can trust and talk to about it. Having you and Rum here reminds me that I’m not alone and I don’t have to face this horrible thing on my own.”

“We’re here for you,” Joseph reassured her. “We might not be able to do much, but we’re here.”

“Thank you. I’m really very grateful for you agreeing to help out with this considering you don’t do it as a job anymore.” She tailed off, biting her lip in anxiety. “Joseph, can I ask a personal question?”

Joseph nodded. “Go ahead.”

“Why did you leave the priesthood?”

Joseph looked down at the keyboard. He knew that his history couldn’t be swept under the rug forever, and he knew that Belle deserved to know what she was getting herself into by accepting his assistance. All the same, he had still hoped that this moment of revelation would never come to pass.

“I didn’t leave,” he said. “I was defrocked.”

“Pardon?”

“I was fired, basically.”

“Oh.” Belle didn’t seem too taken aback by the revelation. “Why? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“I made a mistake.” Joseph sighed, leaning back against the sofa and staring up at the ceiling. He could remember the day as clearly as if it were yesterday, and he would likely always remember it so vividly. It wasn’t something that would ever fade, let alone hold any hope of leaving him alone entirely. “There was a case I was working on, it was after I’d come back to England, I was working alone at the time. There was a young woman with a possession. It was a particularly tricky one, but I was determined that she wasn’t going to suffer with this thing anymore.”

It was so similar to Belle’s case, now that he thought about it. Belle’s entity and the malevolent spirit that had possessed the other victim were infinitely different, but the circumstances were almost the same. A young woman at her wits’ end, whom Joseph had been so determined to help.

“The church had said that it was too risky a case for an exorcism and they were going to send in a specialist from the Vatican to help, but it kept getting delayed and so I went ahead and performed it by myself. They were right; it was too risky. The young lady went into shock and died; there wasn’t anything I could do to save her.”

“Oh Joseph, that’s awful. I’m so sorry.”

“Not as sorry as I am. Even if they hadn’t kicked me out of the church, I don’t know that I would have gone back to investigating after that. I think the only reason that Gold came to me for help with your case in the first place was that he knows I have an extensive library of knowledge when it comes to possessions like yours. If you’d rather I kept away from it now that you know what happened the last time I investigated something like this, then I can quite appreciate that.”

Belle shook her head.

“No. You’ve been so invaluable to the case. I trust you, Joseph. You were doing what you had to in order to help that woman, and I know that you’re doing what you have to in order to help me, too.”

She smiled, a faint little smile with hardship weighing heavy on it, but a smile of genuine gratitude nonetheless. “Thank you so much for all your hard work and everything that you’ve done for me. I know it must be difficult for you after what happened last time.”

Joseph smiled, touched that her faith in him remained unwavering despite the revelations.

“You’re welcome, Belle.”

 


	28. Chapter 28

Two days had passed since the night that Gold and Belle had spent together, the night of Belle’s nightmare about the entity and the dagger, and their failed experiment.

Gold had not been idle during that time, going through all of Aunt Elvira and Aunt Miriam’s effects for any clues as to anything that could possibly be linked to the strange ceremonial sword that had kept cropping up in Joseph’s research. Joseph himself hadn’t been in any further contact, presumably he was waiting until he actually had something concrete about Nimue and the entity’s true origins.

It was the early evening, late summer sun streaming through the windows of Gold’s study, and he was staring at the journals on the desk trying to make things stick together but getting nowhere. The shrill ring of the doorbell jolted him out of the tedium daydream that he had fallen into, and he went to answer it.

He didn’t know why he was surprised to see Belle standing on the doorstep. They were dating, after all, it wasn’t exactly unheard of for people who were dating to go to each other’s houses. Perhaps it was because she’d never come over of her own accord before, he just hadn’t been expecting her.

“Hi,” she said nervously. She had her duffle bag over her shoulder and arms full of groceries. “I hope I’m not being presumptuous, but I was wondering if you wanted to repeat our experiment tonight, since it didn’t work so well the first time that we tried it.” She held up the food. “I’ll cook in exchange for a bed for the night?” she asked hopefully.

Gold smiled and stood back to let her in. “I think that’s a good deal to have. What are we having?”

“Well, I’m not the world’s most amazing cook, but if there’s one thing that Australians know, it’s seafood. King prawn alfredo?”

“It sounds good to me.”

Gold followed Belle through to the kitchen and helped to get out pots and pans for her, opening the bottle of wine that she’d brought and pouring two glasses. It occurred to him that this was the first time they’d shared a meal in one of their homes, rather than at the diner, and he wanted to take this as a good sign of things to come.

“How’ve you been sleeping?” Gold asked, leaning against the kitchen counter with his wine as Belle peeled the prawns. She wrinkled her nose, and Gold could tell that it wasn’t from the smell of the seafood.

“Not fantastic,” she admitted. “I had another nightmare last night. It was very similar to the one I had whilst I was here, actually. I was holding that strange knife again. I think my mind’s fixated on it for some reason.”

Gold honestly didn’t mean for the wine glass to smash on the floor in suitably dramatic Hollywood style, and he rushed around to get a dustpan and brush.

“Are you all right?” Belle asked, leaning over the counter with a worried expression. The broken glass swept up, Gold sat back on his haunches and sighed.

“Yes. No. Yes. I don’t know. I was just thinking about your strange knife in the dreams and what Joseph was saying about a ceremonial sword passed down through the family. What if it’s not a sword at all, but a fancy knife? Or what if the knife you’re seeing in your dreams is actually a sword?”

Belle looked down at the sharp kitchen knife she was holding, and quickly put it down on the cutting board.

“Cripes,” she said softly. “I never thought of that. I suppose that when Joseph said sword, I immediately thought of some hulking great broadsword. I didn’t really think about it meaning any type of blade. And images do get distorted in dreams. Maybe it is a sword that I’m thinking of.”

They remained in silence for a long time, digesting this new connection that had been made purely by chance.

Gold shook himself and got rid of the broken glass, pouring himself a fresh glass of wine.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said firmly, although it did appear that they had come to the bridge slightly earlier than they had been expecting. Still, when Belle had first come in, they had been set to have an enjoyable evening together, and if they could put off thinking about the entity and its influence on Belle’s subconscious dreams for an hour or two, then it would hopefully bring some semblance of normalcy to their lives once more.

Belle picked up the knife again and began to chop onions and garlic with something akin to grim determination. She was not going to let this get the better of her, or their romantic evening in together.

The food was delicious, and they ate in the living room in front of the TV, channel-hopping between mundane reality TV and crime shows and not finding anything to watch. It was such a quaintly domestic scene; and Gold couldn’t help but hope that they might be able to enjoy many more evenings like this in the future. It had been so long since he’d been part of a couple, and even when he had been married, this cosy sense of togetherness had not been there for very long before the cracks started to show between him and Milah. With any luck, it would go the distance with Belle.

Well, provided that they managed to sort out the entity, of course.

It was late into the evening by the time that they accepted that it was probably time to turn in for the night. Belle was looking tired and her pallor and the shadows around her eyes were even more pronounced in the eerie light of the TV. Neither of them really wanted to make that move though. They’d been putting off going to bed for fear of what might happen once they got there, Gold knew that well enough, and he knew that they were going to have to bite the bullet sooner rather than later, or their experiment might well be for nothing.

“Is it bedtime?” Belle asked. She sounded somewhat resigned to the fact.

“If you want it to be,” Gold conceded. “If you want to stay up, then I’m happy to stay up with you.”

Belle shook her head.

“No, that’s not a good idea. I’ve tried staying awake before now. It doesn’t bode well. Not because the entity just takes over anyway, although it has done that before now. But because, well, you saw me that morning in the drugstore when I was arguing with Mr Clark about sleeping pills. I’m a desperate soul after a couple of days without sleep.”

Gold turned the living room lights on and the TV off, and together they tidied up and made their way upstairs towards whatever the night might bring them. Belle’s bed was still made up from her first stay, and she paused in the doorway.

“Good night, Rum.”

“Good night, Belle.”

She was about to turn away and close the door, but then on impulse she slipped her arms around his neck and pulled him in for a kiss, a hard and desperate one with raw need and passion behind it. When she finally released him, her eyes were bright with desire, but with a deep sadness behind them.

“Good night, Rum.”

X

Gold had come to the conclusion that if Belle was in the house, then he probably wasn’t going to be able to get to sleep. It wasn’t so much that he was afraid of what might happen and wanted to be on his guard against her nocturnal wanderings, although that probably had some kind of subconscious part in it. It was more to do with the fact that he knew she was only a few steps away down the corridor, and he was so close to her and yet so far away. They’d shared a bed already, but there was something unspoken hanging in the air between them that seemed to have put going any further than that firmly off the table.

It was sensible to abstain, he knew that, especially when they still didn’t entirely know what they were dealing with in terms of the entity. He didn’t want to court trouble, after all. Gold stared at the ceiling and snorted. He was already courting trouble, and had been ever since he had made the decision to try and work on this relationship with Belle, to hell with whatever the entity wanted. This was just one more obstacle on a very long road to Belle’s recovery that they were going to have to get over at some point.

There was a quiet sound from somewhere in the house that was not his bedroom, and immediately Gold was put on high alert, all thoughts of Belle in all their impurity were instantly gone from his mind as he sat up in bed, trying to work out what the noise was and where it had come from, or more specifically if it had come from Belle’s room. It wasn’t a scream, at least he knew that much.

Hopefully it was just the pipes creaking. It was an old house, after all, and it often settled and groaned in the middle of the night. Perhaps that was where it had received its reputation of being haunted from. All the same, Gold could feel his heart beating hard in his mouth, and his eyes kept darting over to his bedroom window. It was almost like a nightmare in itself, one of the awful lucid dreams where it was obvious what you were going towards and you knew that you were about to witness something horrible, but you had no choice but to go ahead and look at it, because you weren’t in control. A classic horror film cliche.

He got out of bed and went over to the window, not wanting to open the curtains but at the same time knowing that he would not be satisfied and would be living in an adrenaline-fuelled nightmare of what-could-have-been until he did.

He pulled them back with force in the hope of frightening whatever might be on the other side, but there was nothing to see, just the dark garden beyond, no strange shadows pressed up against the glass, trying to get in.

He closed the curtains again and staggered backwards in his utter relief, giving a sharp bark of laughter at the inanity of it all. There was nothing there. It was all just fear in his head. There was no shadow out there tonight.

The house creaked again, and Gold felt a shiver run down his spine. In the dead of night, during the witching hour, at the time when he used to see the shadow back at his aunt’s cottage. He thought again about the realisation that he had come to the other night when Belle had been staying over and he had, like now, been unable to sleep.

_They knew I was coming and they shut me out._

He had always been paralysed with fear that one night, his aunts might forget to cast the circle of protection, and the shadow might somehow find its way in.

The aunts had known it would come after him, and they had shut it out with their circle of light. They had protected him from the shadow that had followed him to America. Now, the aunts were gone, and there was nothing left to protect him from the shadow except the memories of them and the feeble hope that despite not having believed in the craft for so long, he could cast that circle himself and that it would hold up against whatever might want to threaten those inside the house.

The thing that he couldn’t get his head around was the idea that they had known, and he hadn’t. Surely if something malevolent was after him, they would have told him, so that he could be on his guard. Well, he was only four years old, perhaps they didn’t want to scare him any more than he already was, and by the time he was old enough to perhaps understand what was going on, the shadow had vanished from their lives. He wondered if they had seen it too, hanging around outside the house. He’d always assumed that he was the only one who could see it, although he had told the aunts about it many times he’d never thought that perhaps they could sense its evil presence as well.

The house creaked again, and this time Gold knew that it was a footstep on the landing outside. Belle was moving around the house, and he was galvanised into action. This might be his first and perhaps only chance to confront the entity head on and see what it was like when it came out naturally. He opened the bedroom door quietly, peering around it, and he saw Belle creeping down the corridor. She looked over at him when she heard the door open, and smiled. There was nothing about her that looked any different.

“It’s me,” she said. “Don’t worry. I’m one hundred per cent here this time. I couldn’t get to sleep, I was going to get a cup of tea.”

Gold nodded. Whilst a small part of him was disappointed that he wouldn’t have the chance to speak to the entity, the majority of him was relieved. Perhaps jumping out to tackle it wasn’t quite such a sensible idea when he still didn’t have any idea what it actually wanted from him.

“Help yourself,” he said. “Good night, Belle.”

“Good night, Rum.”

She padded along the landing and down the stairs, and Gold saw the downstairs lights come on before he closed his bedroom door and returned to the window. There was still nothing to see outside, but he didn’t close the curtains fully, just in case. He really didn’t want to be caught unawares by the shadow if it chose to return.

A few minutes later, there was a soft knock at his door.

“Rum?” Belle’s voice whispered through the wood, “are you still awake?”

Considering he hadn’t even got back into bed yet, he went over and opened the door again. Belle was standing there in her pyjamas, a mug of tea clutched in both hands. She was looking very small and helpless, just as she had done when she had collapsed in his garden that first morning.

“I know that this is going to sound stupid and I know that it completely ruins the object of me coming over here again tonight to try and repeat our experiment, but I was wondering… Could I sleep with you again, please? It’s just that last time, after you got in with me, it was the best night’s sleep I’d had for a long time, and I really want that again.”

Gold stepped back without a word to let her into his room. As much as he wanted to perform these experiments, he knew that Belle’s wellbeing came first, and if she wanted the sleep that was so precious to her, then he wasn’t going to be the one to deny her it. Another small part of him helpfully pointed out that the more times the experiment got aborted and he and Belle ended up in the same bed rather than spending a night a separate rooms, the more times Belle would have to stay over to try again.

He pushed that thought to the back of his mind and got back into bed beside Belle, getting comfortable and staring up at the ceiling as Belle finished her tea.

“Thank you,” she said.

“It’s my pleasure.”

He rolled over to face her, brushing a lock of hair out of her face and pressing a kiss to her forehead. Belle closed her eyes, a little smile creeping over her face.

“I feel safe with you,” she murmured, and Gold knew in that moment that he would do anything to keep her feeling safe.


	29. Chapter 29

Joseph didn’t realise how little sleep he’d had over the past couple of days until he jerked awake suddenly, finding himself slumped against the sofa in an incredibly awkward position not at all conducive to sleeping. He had a sheet of paper stuck to his damp cheek, and he pulled it off and placed it back in its correct pile as he tried to stretch the aches out of his neck and back. It wasn’t working; he was going to be walking around like a stooping old man for the rest of the day.

He wondered what it was that had woken him, apart from the uncomfortable position, and then he saw that his computer had come back to life and was showing a new message from Belle.

_Hi. Are you awake?_

Joseph had to give a snort of laughter. He was certainly awake now, but that was his own fault for dropping off and leaving his laptop on and able to disturb him. Besides, he probably shouldn’t have stayed asleep in that strange position for much longer or else he might have been permanently stuck in a vaguely pretzel-like shape.

_I’m here_ , he replied to her. _What can I do for you?_

_I’ve had a thought, about the ceremonial sword that you mentioned._

Joseph raised an eyebrow. It was strange that Belle would be coming to him with thoughts about Gold’s family’s supposed sword, but there again, Belle had more hands on experience with the entity than Gold had, so perhaps it wasn’t as farfetched as it might be.

He clicked the button to call her, and a moment later, her face appeared on the screen. She looked a little pensive, like she usually did whenever he saw her over Skype, but she seemed happier than she had been the last time he had seen her. Better rested.

“Hi Joseph,” she said. “I thought I’d come directly to you with this. It just seems easier than passing messages through Gold.”

“Fair enough. So, what have you been thinking about the ceremonial sword?”

“I’ve had a theory. I think it might be linked to how Malcolm managed to break the bloodline.”

“Go on.”

“I think the sword has been broken.”

Joseph took a moment to let the words sink in. It was a leap, but it was a logical one.

“What makes you say that?” he asked.

“Well, I’ve been having nightmares,” Belle said. “That’s nothing new, I’ve suffered from violent nightmares ever since I can remember, and I know that they’re related to the entity. But just recently, I’ve had a few involving a knife. I had the first one a few days ago, it was the night before you told us about the sword. It was only later that Rum and I put two and two together and thought that the knife in my dream and the sword you were talking about might be analogous. I’ve had a couple more since, but not as vivid as the first. This knife’s been there in all of them. And as I said to Rum when I was first telling him about it, it’s a fancy knife. The kind that might be called ceremonial. But it’s definitely a knife, not a sword.”

“I see.” Joseph reached over the sofa and scrabbled in a pile of photocopies from the archives, trying to find any more detailed descriptions of what the sword had looked like. “Go on. What’s your theory of it being broken?”

“If the blade of the sword was broken, then you’d end up with two things that look like knives,” she said. “Shorter swords, if you will.”

“Yes, I can’t fault that logic.”

“I was wondering if maybe Malcolm broke the sword, and that’s what broke the bloodline, and I’m dreaming about the knife because of that.”

Joseph took a while to digest this information.

“Or that could just be a flight of fancy,” Belle said quickly, mistaking his long train of thought for disbelief.

“No, no, I think that when it comes to this case, nothing can be dismissed as a flight of fancy,” Joseph assured her. “I’m just trying to piece it all together.”

If the act of breaking the bloodline involved an act of physically breaking something, then that would certainly make sense in explaining how come Malcolm had managed to get rid of the entity in the first place. It didn’t help them all that much, but it gave them a starting point.

Perhaps restoring the sword would restore the bloodline somehow, and the entity would leave Belle alone.

Unfortunately, as far as Joseph could tell, restoring the original bloodline just meant that the entity would transfer itself into Gold and keep causing trouble with him - perhaps even causing more trouble because it was with its intended recipient. If there was a way to destroy the entity altogether, that would be the best way. Some way to flush out the darkness and lay it to rest properly.

He grabbed a clean sheet of paper and a pen from the side and smoothed them out over his lap.

“Can you describe this knife for me, please?” He hadn’t managed to find any visual interpretations of the Gold ceremonial sword in any of his papers, and this might give him a clue as to what he was actually looking for.

“The blade’s about nine, ten inches long, and wavy,” Belle said. “It looks like a smooth edge, not jagged in anyway. Well-maintained.”

Joseph nodded, beginning to sketch out the dagger’s shape quickly.

“Are there any markings on it?”

“Yes; there are black engravings on the silver blade. There are geometric shapes and some kind of writing down the centre, but it’s always obscured or I can’t read it properly for some over reason, so I can’t tell you what it says.”

“That’s all right, I’m sure we can fill in the gaps later. You say that you’re always holding the knife?”

“Yes. And it’s usually stained with blood that I somehow know is my own.”

“Right.” Joseph looked down at his sketch. “Well, that’s good to know.”

“What are we going to do now?” Belle asked. “I mean, trying to fix a broken sword is one thing, but we have no idea where this knife might be, if it even exists, or where the rest of it is, or how to put it back together again, or whether putting it back together again would even be a good idea, all things considered.”

“No,” Joseph conceded, “but every little bit of information that we can get will help us to build a bigger picture, and we’ll get to the bottom of it somehow.”

Belle nodded, but she still looked forlorn.

“It just feels like everything’s happening so quickly,” she said. “It took us so long to get started; the entity was giving us so little information and what it did give us, didn’t make any sense. Now, we seem to be getting more and more every day, and I don’t know what to do with it all.”

“We’ll get there,” Joseph said firmly. Belle looked so sad; he just wanted to reach through the computer screen and comfort her, and it was with an inward sigh that he realised just how much he had begun to care for her over the last couple of months of their acquaintance. More than once over the past week or so, he had seriously considered going over to America in order to be more hands on with the investigations, and each time he had talked himself out of it by saying that the research he was doing here was much more important.

“How are you feeling otherwise?” he asked, trying to draw his mind away from that other train of thought. “You look more refreshed than you did the last time we spoke.”

Belle nodded. “I am. The entity hasn’t been active recently. I think I’ve found a way to calm it down, but I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

Joseph’s brow furrowed. “Why would it be a bad thing?”

“I get nervous when it’s quiet,” Belle admitted. “It makes me think that it’s planning something. The more it’s out and about, the more I can almost tell what it’s doing. Before it was always trying to get to Rum. Now it’s here, and it’s closer to him than ever before, and it’s not doing anything. It feels like it’s biding its time and waiting for the right moment to strike.” She sighed, running a hand through her hair. “I know that Rum thinks that there’s some kind of subconscious part of me that’s still in control and stopping it from doing anything too drastic, but I’m not quite as convinced. I’ve never felt in control of it, it’s like it’s something completely separate from me, and much bigger than my scope of consciousness. I guess that’s because it’s so old.”

“Older entities and beings do tend to have more presence,” Joseph agreed. “The older they are, the more powerful they become, as these things tend to accumulate over the centuries. And we’ve already established that this thing is very old.”

Belle nodded. “That’s what I’m worried about. At the same time though, the peace and the restful sleep has been wonderful; I think it’s the first time I’ve ever been so rested for as long as I can remember. And a selfish part of me wants to keep that going for as long as I can.”

“What’s caused it to quieten down?” Joseph asked. “Anything in particular, or just proximity to Gold?”

Belle looked sheepish, turning away from the webcam.

“I think it’s, erm, rather close proximity to Gold,” she said eventually. “We’ve been sleeping together. Not in that way!” she hastened to add. “I mean actually sleeping, just in the same bed.”

Joseph suppressed a laugh. “I’m not a priest anymore, Belle, I’m hardly likely to be judging you even if you were sleeping together in that way.”

“I know, but you’re still Catholic and I don’t want to offend your sensibilities.”

“If I didn’t want my sensibilities offending, then I picked the wrong line of work in possession investigation,” Joseph said. “It’s not for the faint of heart or the easily offended. Entities and demons can be extremely creative when it comes to language and other forms of self-expression.”

“Yeah.” Belle paused. “I’ve never seen _The Exorcist_ but I know enough about it.”

She scrubbed her hands over her face. “I’m scared, Joseph,” she said plainly. “I know that there’s nothing that you can say to reassure me, and that’s not really what I’m looking for. But I am scared, because this is all new to me. It’s never been like this before and I’m still scared that people are going to get hurt. I just want this thing to get out of me.”

“We will get it out of you,” Joseph promised. “We know so much more about it that we didn’t before, and we can work with that. We will find a way.”

A thought struck him right between the eyes, and he snapped his fingers. Suddenly, things were falling into place. He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought about it before; maybe it had taken talking to Belle about the knife in her dreams to make him see the light. All this time he had been searching for Nimue, he hadn’t been paying much attention to the Arthurian legend side of things, figuring that there was no way the two could be related. Now he wasn’t so sure.

“Joseph?” Belle said. “Are you all right?”

He nodded. “I’ve had a brainwave. I think I might be able to find out some more about this sword-turned-knife.”

“Well, that’s great news. I’ll let you go and get on with it, then. Let me know if you find out anything.”

“I will. And if you get any more details about what the knife looks like in your dreams, tell me. Every little thing counts.”

They said their goodbyes and rang off the call, and Joseph immediately got to work.

In some versions of the legends, Nimue and the Lady of the Lake were one and the same. And the Lady of the Lake was the one who had held forth the famous sword Excalibur.

It was a long stretch to think that Excalibur was real, and it was an even longer stretch to think that it might be this mysterious ceremonial sword that had been linked to Gold’s family and then seemingly lost, forgotten about or perhaps, as Belle’s dream might suggest, broken.

His search for images of the famous sword did not turn up anything of particular note; there were so many different ones that it would take a lifetime to go through them all, and the chance that one of them was the real thing was practically nil.

All the same, the swords purporting to be Excalibur, and the ones that weren’t purporting to be it at all and were definitely fake, all seemed to have one thing in common.

More often than not, there were engravings on the blade. They all said different things, and not all of them contained writing. There were various different levels of subtlety in the designs, but they were definitely there.

He paused before modifying the search for Excalibur-themed letter openers and pocket knives, which would be closer to what Belle was seeing in her dreams. Again, there was huge variation, but engravings on the blade looked to be quite common.

It was time to put aside his search for the real Nimue who was Gold’s ancestor, and focus once more on the woman of the legend and the sword she had brought into the world.


	30. Chapter 30

Gold looked down at Belle sleeping soundly in his arms, nuzzled in against his shoulder, her arm draped over his bare chest protectively. She looked so beautiful and so peaceful, and he knew that no matter what happened, he could never bring himself to regret what they had just done.

The voice at the back of his mind that reminded him of Ella was telling him that it was too soon, that they were going too fast, and they were in the middle of something that neither of them really understood, messing with something that might well want to cause them harm. Gold shook his head, trying to get the voice to go away.

Perhaps it was inevitable that sharing a bed with Belle would eventually lead to sex. He hadn’t planned on it happening quite so soon, but now that it had happened, he didn’t feel that it was too soon. They were comfortable enough around each other to sleep in the same bed, after all.

Belle had been staying overnight for four days now, and they had moved seamlessly from Belle migrating to Gold’s bed in the dead of night to them both sleeping in the same bed from the start. True, this wasn’t getting anything done in the way of experimenting with the entity, but at least Belle was getting some much needed restful sleep, and Gold, well, he was just enjoying having another warm body to hold at night for the first time in a very long time.

It had happened so naturally tonight. They had settled down to sleep as normal, and after turning out her light and plunging them into a darkness that for once was kind and comfortable and held no fear, Belle had leaned over to kiss Gold goodnight, as had become her habit ever since she had begun to share his bed. Gold had grown to love that little goodnight kiss. It made it seem like sharing a bed was something that they did because they were in a long established relationship rather than for any other more complicated reasons like trying to prevent Belle from having nightmares. It was like when they went out for their little dates at Granny’s and pointedly avoided talking about anything that was related to the supernatural. Right now, with the case taking up so much time in his waking hours, Gold was quite happy for his nights to contain as little of it as possible. So, they had kissed goodnight as usual.

They just hadn’t stopped, their kiss becoming more and more heated as Belle brought her hands up to card in Gold’s hair, and he slipped his arms around her to pull her in closer. Then all of a sudden her legs were entangled with his, and her breasts were pressing against his chest, and his cock was beginning to stir.

Neither of them had pulled away, worried that it was too soon or too risky what with everything else that had happened over the past few weeks. Neither of them wanted to. It was risky and it was quick, and Ella and Joseph would probably despair of the pair of them if they were to find out what had happened this evening, but Gold didn’t care. It had felt so right at the time, and he knew that Belle felt the same way. She’d told him so before she’d dropped off to sleep, not letting go of him, the sated expression on her face not dying away as she finally gave in to that blissful oblivion, no longer fearful of going to sleep and what the night might bring.

_“Thank you,”_ she had whispered to him. _“Thank you for making me feel beautiful and desirable again.”_

_“It was my pleasure,”_ he had replied, tilting her chin up so that he could capture another kiss from her. _“And you have never been anything other than beautiful and desirable.”_

That was perfectly true. Whilst he had not necessarily considered the idea of pursuing a relationship with her when he had first met her in the bar those many weeks before, he could not deny that she had been attractive then, even with the pale, pinched look on her face and the dark circles under her eyes, ones that were finally beginning to fade. As he had got to know her better, so her loveliness had only increased in his eyes, to the point where he was now lying naked in his bed with her.

As satisfied as he was with what had just occurred from his own point of view, Gold was just pleased that he had been able to help Belle relax, and a small part of him, long since buried beneath the veneer of his work and the prickly facade that did not invite intimacy of any kind, preened to know that whatever scant skill in the bedroom he had possessed before, he had not lost in the intervening years.

Gold readjusted his hold on Belle, stroking the pale expanse of her back beneath the covers and smoothing her dark hair out of her face. She did look so lovely like this, happy and satisfied and completely at ease. When she was like this it was easy to forget the thing that had brought them together in the first place. It was easy to forget that they were dealing with something far beyond either of their ken and their ability to deal with. Gold knew, objectively, that he ought to bear that in mind, but he couldn’t help his thoughts wending away from their strange case and back in the direction of the intimacy that they had just shared in the darkness.

It hadn’t been the most mind-blowing of intimate encounters. There was all of the shyness and nervous fumbling that always went with the first time with a new partner. Gold didn’t care. He was there with Belle, and she was on top of him, taking her pyjama top off with a light blush suffusing her cheeks as she took his hands and put them on her breasts. He hadn’t needed any further invitation after that.

Gold closed his eyes, remembering the events that followed like a dream. Belle’s hands tugging off his t-shirt and mapping his chest, her blue eyes dark with desire. Her mouth on his as she rubbed up against him. The way she bit her bottom lip with a question in her face, asking if wanted to go any further, if he was all right, if he thought they were moving too quickly.

_“No,”_ he had said, capturing her lips once more as he tipped her over onto her back.

It hadn’t moved the earth, Gold hadn’t expected it to. He was more impressed with the fact that he had condoms that were in date rather than anything else they might have got up to. He’d almost put the thing on inside out in his distraction, but Belle didn’t seem to mind the delay as she helped him get himself sorted out. And oh, once he was inside her, it was heaven, and it made up for all the awkwardness that had come before. Belle had welcomed him readily and it almost felt like coming home. As he had come with her name on his lips and her legs hooked around his hips, he didn’t think he’d ever want to be anywhere else.

Belle shifted in her sleep, digging her fingers into his side a little and rubbing her nose in against his shoulder. There was a little smirk on her face, a cheeky expression, and Gold smiled. It didn’t seem like she was in any danger of screaming herself awake tonight. Sex as a tool for better sleep. Was that a recommended method of curing insomnia? It seemed to work for Belle at any rate, although it wasn’t doing much for him. Wasn’t it men who were supposed to roll over and fall asleep as soon as the deed was done?

Not that they had rolled over as soon as the deed was done. They’d lain there in the cooling for a long time before Belle had begun to drop off. Kissing, touching, caressing, still marvelling at what had just happened and the fact that it had felt so good and so right in spite of whatever misgivings they might have had.

Hopefully, it was a sign of good things to come.

X

Gold woke with a distinct sense of unease. He hadn’t really remembered falling asleep; not that he usually remembered falling asleep, but he had been unusually awake after he and Belle had made love and he had been enjoying lying there in the darkness with Belle in his arms. On the previous occasions they had slept together he had ended up spooning her, his erection pressing into her arse, much to her amusement. It had been nice to get a little closer to her and feel her arms around him, instead of the other way around.

Her arms weren’t around him now, although he could still feel that her weight was in the bed beside him so she must just have rolled over away from him in her sleep and was curled up on her side like she normally slept.

Gold pulled the covers up over his exposed chest where the skin was turning to gooseflesh. Something sent a shiver down his spine, and he didn’t think that it was the cool temperature in the bedroom. It was a shiver of fear, like the sensation of being watched, and it froze him in place, preventing him from simply turning over and curling up with Belle again, taking her in his arms and burying his face in the back of her neck against the world. Unwilling to take his gaze away from the ceiling, Gold nevertheless forced himself to look over in the direction of the window. As had become his custom, he had left the drapes a little way open, allowing a thin sliver of moonlight to illuminate the bedroom but more importantly, allowing him to see at a glance if any shadows were peeping in on him. For a moment he wondered if the shadow had seen what he and Belle had been doing earlier, before he decided that he really didn’t want to follow that train of thought.

There was nothing outside the window, and Gold breathed a sigh of relief. He was just being paranoid. There was nothing to worry about.

He stretched out his limbs and rolled over, and his heart stopped.

Belle was sitting up in bed beside him.

Except, it wasn’t Belle.

It should have been Belle. To all intents and purposes, it was Belle. She looked like Belle in all respects. The same skin, the same hair, the same pert little breasts on display where the covers were bunched at her waist.

But there was nothing of Belle in her eyes. Pitch black, no whites or intensely blue irises, just the deepest and most soulless darkness that Gold had ever seen in all his years. Any trace of Belle was lost in those pure black eyes, staring at him with an unnerving stillness of manner. Gold was not a religious man and never had been, but there was something about those eyes that he knew was instinctively evil.

“Belle?” he whispered, his voice choking around the single word. It wasn’t Belle. He knew it wasn’t Belle. Something in the back of his mind gave a sharp, shrill bark of humourless laughter. They had begun this experiment, with Belle sleeping in Gold’s house, to try and allow him a glimpse of the entity in its natural state. Now, he was definitely face to face with it and he suddenly wanted to be anywhere else in the world. He could certainly understand why Belle’s father had found the sight so unnerving and wouldn’t speak to her about it.

The entity shook its head, and Gold couldn’t decide if seeing it move was more or less unnerving than seeing it totally still had been. Its mouth curled up into something that on Belle herself would have been a smile, but that now just looked terrifying.

“I’m sorry,” it said, and Gold recognised the chilling voice that had spoken when Belle had been hypnotised in Dr Hopper’s office and the entity had taken control. “Belle’s not here at the moment.”

Gold was petrified. When he had envisaged tackling the entity head on, he’d previously assumed that there would be a handy bedroom door between it and him and that he would have at least some clothes on at the time. He’d never felt more vulnerable, and he realised that the entity had probably been counting on that. Belle had said she was afraid that it was up to something. She was right. It had been biding its time, waiting for them to get close enough. So close. As close as they could possibly get.

“It’s been a long time, Rum,” the entity said. “You evaded me for such a long time. Don’t go anywhere, dearie. You and I have a lot of catching up to do.”


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for this chapter: brief discussion of dubious consent/lack of consent. (All of Belle and Gold's activities have been fully consensual, don't worry about that.)
> 
> There's also the fact that the entity is possessing Belle throughout the chapter, not sure quite what to warn for that.

Gold took a deep breath. This was his chance to finally speak to the entity face to face and learn what it wanted from him and why it was here. Well, he sort of knew the answers to those questions already. The entity was trying to reunite with its original bloodline, which currently consisted of himself.

What it was going to do now that it had found its original bloodline was something else entirely.

“Your aunts were very clever, you know, when they cast their spells to keep me out,” the entity said. It reached out a hand to touch Gold’s face and he recoiled away as far as he could. “They knew that I would try to come for you, after your father’s betrayal. They protected you for as long as they could, but they’re not here to protect you now, are they?”

Gold closed his eyes, not wanting to see the soulless black ones where Belle’s brilliant blue should have been.

“What did my father do?”

“He cut me out.” The entity’s voice was harsh, snapping at him. “Broke the blade and broke the blood. He thought that he could escape my influence, thought that he could pass it straight on to you and let your aunts deal with the fallout whilst he got away and led a carefree life away from the deals his ancestors didn’t understand.”

Gold’s blood was already running cold as a result of the conversation he was having, but a fresh chill rushed down his spine. His father had intentionally tried to pass the entity onto him by somehow removing it from himself?

“Your father was a very stupid man,” the entity hissed. “Like so many of the forefathers who came before him who tried to get rid of me. I must say that I admire him though, he certainly came the closest. He’s the only one who ever got me out of his head. He failed to get me into yours however. I’ve had to use my own wits to track you down. How fortunate that my host should be so young and… fertile.”

Gold gulped. “Were you responsible for… this?”

The thought that Belle might not have been acting completely out of her own free will when they had been pursuing their relationship made him feel sick.

“Oh no, I’m happy to say that I was able to take a back seat and let events unfold naturally when it came to you and Belle acting on your mutual feelings. I must say I was quite pleasantly surprised that I didn’t have to intervene. You never were a child with much gumption when I knew you, when I was there on the outside looking in through the light circle. Always so scared of the shadow outside your window, never realising that it was part of your destiny. You were quite pathetic and snivelling, actually.”

It was like hearing his father’s voice all over again, as he left him with Aunt Elvira and Aunt Miriam and disappeared out of his life forever. Even then, he had been expecting the entity to manifest itself in a three year old child.

“She’s been difficult,” the entity said, looking Belle’s body up and down. “She’s a fighter, and she’s only become stronger in these last few weeks. She fought hard that night in Boston, so hard she almost succeeded in pushing me out again.”

The shadow, Gold thought. Whatever had been going on in Belle’s mind at the time, she’d pushed the shadow out. That was why it had appeared to him after so long absent. She’d almost succeeded in untethering the entity from herself, just as Malcolm had done.

The entity continued to speak. “I was never one for believing in the power of love and all that crap, but maybe there’s something in her subconscious that’s scared of me hurting you.”

“And are you going to hurt me?” Gold asked. So far the entity wasn’t showing any signs of becoming violent, and Gold wasn’t sure whether than unnerved him more or less than this unnatural stillness did.

“Of course not,” the entity crooned. “You’re my true host, why would I ever hurt you? I need you. Her blood is strong and rich and it’s kept me sustained for these last couple of decades whilst I tried to find my way back to you, but it’s just no substitute for the real thing.”

The entity reached out again, its manner gentle and almost caressing, and Gold scrabbled away from it, falling out of bed and sprawling on the floor.

The entity peered over the edge of the bed, prowling on all fours and looking down at him like a cat toying with its prey.

“I did tell you not to go anywhere,” it said. “We’re going to have so much fun together, you and I, now that we’re finally back together again.”

Gold got back to his feet and grabbed his pyjama pants where they’d been kicked out of the bed in the earlier ardour, pulling them on quickly. Not that he thought that they would provide all that much protection against whatever kind of attack the entity might launch at him, but at least he felt a little less exposed, and that calmed a little of the fear that he was feeling. He took a couple more deep breaths, trying to keep a safe distance between himself and the entity on the bed, and he remembered what Joseph had said about communicating with the entity directly and answering direct questions.

“Who are you?” he asked. “Where did you come from? What did Nimue do to bind you to the bloodline?”

“Questions, questions, so many questions. There’s no time to waste, you know.”

Gold shook his head. “Answer my questions first. Then we’ll discuss what happens next.” He had no intention of welcoming the entity into his head, and no intention of allowing it in there without putting up one hell of a fight, and he really needed to know as much as possible before he took any drastic measures.

“You can call me the Dark One,” the entity said. “That’s what everyone else who’s ever made my acquaintance has called me, and I’ve become used to it by now. I come from a place beyond time and beyond light, a prison of darkness. Nimue summoned me, she freed me.” The entity looked smug. “She made a deal that she didn’t understand.”

“What deal?”

“She wanted strength and power to protect her family,” the Dark One said. It still sounded rather smug. “Oh yes, she had noble intentions at first. She was so easy to trick and manipulate. Your friend Joseph would know all about it. Never make a deal with a demon from before the dawn of time and light. It will never go in your favour.”

The entity was getting closer now, slipping off the bed and stalking over to him with feline grace.

“Could you put some clothes on, please?” Gold asked.

The Dark One looked down at Belle’s naked body and then back up at Gold.

“Don’t you like it? You were enjoying it quite a bit earlier.”

“You’re not Belle,” Gold snapped. “Grant her a little dignity whilst you deal with me.”

The Dark One laughed, high and cruel.

“I’ve been on this plane for almost two millennia and I’ll never understand humans. But still, if you must, I’ll humour you.”

It picked up Belle’s discarded nightdress out of the mess of bed covers and put it on. “Better?”

“Yes. You were telling me about Nimue.”

“I would have kept telling you about Nimue if you hadn’t interrupted with your delicate sensibilities.”

“She summoned you to help protect her family.”

“Oh yes. It was the perfect opportunity. She was so desperate. I’ve always recognised a desperate soul.” The entity turned its head on one side, looking at Gold critically. “You’re a desperate soul yourself, Rum. Trying so hard to reconcile what you know with what you think you know with what you want to believe.”

“Nimue,” Gold said through gritted teeth. “Tell me about Nimue. How did she summon you? How did she bind you to the blood line?”

“She made a deal…”

“... she didn’t understand, yes, I get that much.”

He kept inching away from the entity, towards the bedroom door, desperate to get something solid between himself and this terrifying presence, but at the same time incredibly fearful that in doing so, the entity would cause some harm to come to Belle. The entity kept following him, effortlessly matching him pace for pace.

“It was a grim time,” the Dark One continued. “Murder and pillaging and lawlessness. Nimue summoned me with the blade. She made a deal. I would help her protect her family.” The entity did a very good job of looking innocent, only the black eyes giving it away. “I did help her protect her family, just as I said I would. I’ve been watching over them ever since. From within.”

Gold didn’t think a sentence had ever sounded so profoundly creepy in his ears. He reached out blindly behind him, feeling for the door handle. Something told him that it would be a very bad idea to stop looking at the thing; he’d seen enough horror films in his time to know that looking away from something was the surest way to get it sneaking up behind you the moment you took your eyes off it.

The blade was key. The ceremonial sword, the knife that Belle had been holding in her nightmares when the entity had merged with her. It was all coming together now. The blood on the blade that Belle had known was her own: had Nimue had to spill blood in order to summon the Dark One in the first place and that was how come it had been linked to their bloodline?

“Where is the blade now?” he asked, horribly aware of the desperation in his voice. If he could tell he was desperate, then the Dark One definitely could.

Instead of the snide, smug reaction that Gold was expecting, however, the entity’s face contorted into a mask of terrifying anger.

“They betrayed me!” it roared. “You father, your aunts, they betrayed me! They shut me out! All in the name of protecting themselves! Your father took the secret to his grave to save his own skin! Your aunts betrayed the sanctity of the bloodline! They betrayed me!”

The rage in the Dark One’s face - it could no longer be called Belle’s in any sense of the word for all the physical similarities - was awful to behold, and Gold finally found the door handle. He could only pray that Belle would forgive him for running out on their night together like this.

He wrenched the door open and threw himself out into the corridor, slamming the door shut in the entity’s face before it could follow him.

He could hear its fists beating on wood, nails scraping down the paint.

“You betrayed me!” it screamed. “You, Malcolm, Elvira! You all betrayed me! But I’m back now, and the bloodline will be restored! They can’t protect you forever! Belle can’t hold me back forever! Nimue let me into the bloodline and I will stay there!”

It was tugging at the door handle, trying to get out, and Gold pulled the full force of his weight against it. Ultimately, it only had Belle’s strength to work with and if he could just hold out long enough against it, if he could just hold out long enough for Belle’s consciousness to fight its way back to the surface. Surely it couldn’t take that long, but with the Dark One in such a vicious rage, perhaps that wasn’t so much of a given.

After a few minutes, the screaming on the other side of the door subsided, and so did the intense pressure on the wood. Gold let out the shaky breath that he didn’t even know he had been holding.

“Belle?” he said softly through the wood. “Belle, are you there?”

There was no response.

“Belle?”

On the other side of the door, Gold could make out the faint sound of muffled sobbing, and he chanced to turn the door handle a little.

“Belle?”

“No!” It was Belle’s voice, anguished and horrified. “No! Don’t come in! It’s not safe! I’m not safe!”

Gold let his hand drop from the handle. She sounded so distraught, but he knew better than to go against her wishes.

“I’m right outside if you need me, sweetheart.”

Gold sank down the door, sitting heavily on the carpet and burying his face in his hands, shaking uncontrollably as he tried to take in the terrifying events of the last few minutes.


	32. Chapter 32

Joseph looked down at the laptop screen, tapping his credit card against the arm of the sofa as he navigated the perilous minefield of flight comparisons. He still hadn’t worked out whether or not going over to America would be a good idea, and he still hadn’t discussed it with Gold or Belle yet.

A part of him thought that it would be better for him to stay where he was across the pond, where he had much easier access to the archives and relics of the Gold family’s time in Scotland before Malcolm had done whatever it was that he had done to sever the entity. Another part of him was certain that his presence was going to be needed with Belle and Gold sooner rather than later, and he wanted to be on hand when that happened rather than several thousand miles away in a different time zone.

When they had last spoke, Belle had been worried that the entity was planning something, and Joseph didn’t hold out any hope that the entity would share the exact nature of those plans with her. When whatever happened, happened, it would do so without warning, and they had no idea what it might do.

He hadn’t heard from either Belle or Gold for a few days, and he was hoping that was a good sign. No news was good news: at least that was what had always been drilled into him. When it came to malevolent entities possibly seeking revenge for broken bloodlines, however, Joseph felt that he wasn’t being overly paranoid when he said that he was getting a little bit worried.

He was just wondering whether it would be better to get an overnight flight or one that went during the day when the shrill bark of the telephone brought him out of his train of thought and back into the present. It was mid-morning, comparatively early for Gold to be calling him from America, but all the same, Joseph had the uncanny feeling that he knew who was calling.

_Speak of the devil and he shall appear_.

He answered with a little trepidation. “Joseph Macavoy.”

_“Joseph, it’s Gold.”_

The fact that Gold had called and not contacted him online immediately put Joseph on edge. Gold would only call if there was an emergency, or something that he needed Joseph’s advice about Right Now This Minute.

“What’s happening?”

_“Would you be able to come over here for the next phase of the case?”_  Gold asked.  _”I’ll pay your airfare and you can stay at my place.”_

Ordinarily, Joseph would have made some kind of comment about Gold being desperate, but he could tell from the other man’s voice that he was incredibly shaken. Something had happened.

“I was actually considering coming over myself,” he said. “There’s a flight tomorrow that gets into Boston at midday.”

_“Great. Could you come over please? We’ve had some… interesting developments. I think it would be best if we were all in the same place for what comes next. I think I’ve worked out how the entity was summoned in the first place, and how we can get rid of it, but I’m going to need your expertise.”_

“Right. Gold, what’s happened? I can tell from your voice that something’s happened. I’ve never heard you sound so shaken, even back when we were working together, and we saw some things during that time.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the phone.

_“I met the entity,”_  Gold said eventually.  _“I actually managed to get some answers out of it which might prove useful, but it’s not an experience that I particularly want to repeat.”_

It must have been bad then, for Gold not to want to go through it again. Joseph had always admired Gold’s tenacity when it came to experimentation and trying to get to the bottom of things, and he had endured all kinds of bizarre scenarios in the name of solving a case. Things had definitely taken a turn for the worse. It appeared that whatever the entity was planning had come into fruition to devastating effect.

“Are you and Belle both ok?” Joseph asked.

_“Yes. Physically we’re fine. I’m not sure what the entity wants with me, but it didn’t attempt to attack me. Well, not at first, and only then when I inadvertently made it angry. It’s too complicated to explain over the phone but I think that whatever my aunts did to protect me from it when I was young is still in effect somehow. It’s just… well, I think I’ll be having nightmares about it for the rest of my life, if I’m honest.”_

“How’s Belle holding up?”

There was another long pause, and Joseph’s stomach began to sink to his boots.

_“Not great,”_  Gold said.  _“I can imagine that it was a very traumatic experience for her. She’s been avoiding me ever since it happened; I haven’t been able to get hold of her.”_

“When did this happen?” Joseph asked.

_“The night before last.”_

“Your experiment worked, then?”

_“Not exactly.”_  Gold sounded distinctly sheepish.  _“Belle, erm, didn’t wander.”_

Joseph might be a former priest but he was certainly not naive, and he easily put two and two together. Well, it looked like he’d found out what the entity had been waiting for.

“Say no more. I suppose the only good thing to come of this is that you’ve got a lot more information than you had before, and you’ve got it straight from the horse’s mouth. I’ll be over as soon as I can.”

_“Thanks, Joseph. I really don’t think that this is something that Belle and I will be able to tackle alone.”_

Gold admitting that he really needed help was a mark of how bad it was.

“I’m on my way,” Joseph assured him. “Keep yourself and Belle safe.”

_“I’ll try, but like I said, I haven’t been able to get in touch with her. I think she’s hiding out of a desire to prevent it happening again.”_

“We’ll get to the bottom of it. Boston Logan International airport, midday local time tomorrow.”

_“I’ll be there.”_

They said their goodbyes and Joseph hung up, quickly making the necessary arrangements to book his flight to Boston for the next day before sitting back in his chair and staring at the laptop screen without seeing anything.

It was obvious that whatever had happened that night between Gold and the entity had had a profound effect on both Gold and Belle. Things seemed to be moving along very quickly now that the entity had shown its hand, and if Gold really had an idea of how to defeat it, then it made sense that they would want to get going on that as soon as possible.

One thing that struck Joseph was that Gold evidently did not think that there was anything more to be gleaned from research here in the UK. Effectively, he could give up his search for Nimue and Excalibur; if the entity had already given them the answers that they needed in however strange circumstances. Joseph was not particularly saddened by this; there were so many resources surrounding Arthurian legend and all its origins that it was hard to know where to even begin with it.

All the same, the little niggling doubts that had stopped him from booking the flight in the first place kept creeping in; he couldn’t be sure that he hadn’t missed something vital in his research, and if he was over in Storybrooke with Gold and Belle, then there would be no way for him to fact check against everything that he had learned in his researches on this side of the pond. Still, he was committed to going now; he had promised his old friend that he would help him in his and Belle’s hour of need and he was going to do so, no matter what the cost might be.

The thought of costs brought him full circle, back to the incident that had ended his career in the priesthood. Belle had said that she trusted him, and he just wished that he could trust himself. If it came down to Gold requiring him to perform some kind of exorcism, then Joseph dreaded to think what might happen.

He had already told himself far too many times that he was getting in too deep with this case, that he was getting too desperate to help Belle out of her terrible plight, and he absolutely did not want to make the same mistakes as he had made last time. The fact that he was acting alone now did nothing to reassure him. Before, he’d had the church telling him that what he was about to do was a terrible idea and he needed to wait for more experienced assistance before he attempted it.

Now, he didn’t have anyone watching over his shoulder giving him warnings. He was going to have to trust his own judgement, and Joseph hadn’t trusted his own judgement for a long time. The others might trust him, but that would count for nothing if he couldn’t trust himself. Any entity would pick up on that doubt.

When Joseph had first been getting into the field of paranormal investigation within the church, one of the older priests who had been working within the branch for decades had told him that the best weapon against anything that he might encounter was sheer, blind faith. Demons could sense wavering and inconsistency, but if your faith was strong and true enough, then it would always see you through. Perhaps another man might have scoffed at the idea, but no-one could deny that the old priest had seen an awful lot in his time and was still there to tell the tale without a scratch on him.

Joseph had sheer, blind faith in God; he always had done. It was faith in himself that was lacking.

Still, he had made a promise, and he was a man of his word, even if those words might turn out to be fatal.

It was with a little trepidation that Joseph began packing for his impromptu trip to Storybrooke.

X

Gold stayed looking at the phone for a long time after hanging up with Joseph. As much as he was looking forward to seeing his old friend in the flesh again after so many years, he wished that it could be under more auspicious circumstances. When he’d previously envisaged them meeting up during the course of this case, he had hoped that they would have reached a conclusion about what to do with the entity and would just be following up on it and bringing everything to a safe and happy conclusion. As it was, everything was up the air and nothing was safe or happy.

He sighed and picked up the phone again, dialling Belle’s number for the third time that day. It rang and rang before finally cutting to voicemail, just as it had done the previous two times. Gold didn’t leave a message; there wasn’t a lot of point in it. He’d already left two. Belle was actively avoiding him, and he could well see why. To have come back to consciousness to find herself alone in the bedroom and scratching at the door with him behind it must have been terrifying in and of itself, and not knowing what she had done during her absence even more so.

It had been a horrible night after the entity had appeared; Belle had cried on the other side of the bedroom door for almost an hour before she emerged, fully dressed, and raced towards the front door.

_“Belle, it’s the middle of the night,”_  Gold had said. “ _Please, don’t leave now, it’s not safe.”_

She had shaken her head.

_“No. You’re not safe, not with me around. This was a bad idea; I knew it would be from the start. I’m so sorry I dragged you into this, I’m so sorry for what happened. I just can’t go on with this anymore. I’ve been afraid of this happening for weeks and now it has happened and I just can’t let it happen again. I couldn’t bear to hurt you, Rum.”_

_“I’m not hurt,”_  he had assured her.  _“A little shaken, but not hurt.”_

_“And if you hadn’t got a door between us in time?”_

Gold hadn’t had a ready answer for that one, and Belle had run out into the depths of the night. He’d stood stunned at the door for a minute before going back upstairs to grab some more clothes and following her in the Cadillac. She’d finally accepted a ride back to her own flat, but she hadn’t spoken to him for the entire journey, and she wouldn’t look him in the eye. He had caught a glimpse of her as he had left her outside the library and turned the car around, her blue eyes red-rimmed from her earlier crying and welling afresh with tears. She looked so defeated, and all Gold wanted to do was hold her and tell her that everything was going to be all right, but at the same time, the memory of turning over in bed to meet soulless black eyes and something else entirely possessing Belle’s body was going to stay with him for a long time, and he shivered at the thought of it.

All he could do was wait for Joseph to arrive, and hope that the feeble plan he had to get rid of the entity once and for all would do the trick, and hope that Belle would be amenable to the plan once he managed to get back in touch with her.

He really, really hoped that she hadn’t done anything drastic to try and free herself from the Dark One.


	33. Chapter 33

Although Joseph had seen Gold over Skype quite a few times over the last few weeks during the course of their investigation, he had not laid eyes on his friend in the flesh for a number of years. Walking out into Boston airport arrivals hall, it felt like the first time he had come to America, back when he had still been wearing the dog collar and had met Gold for the first time.

This time, he wasn’t with a taxi driver holding up a neatly printed sign reading Macavoy. He was just hanging around at the back of the crowd of people greeting their relatives, standing next to the coffee shop.

He looked older than he had done when they had last met in person, but then again, Joseph knew that he did himself as well. It had been years after all, and he knew that they had not been kind to him even if they had been slightly better to Gold.

All the same, he definitely looked a lot more haggard and stressed now than he had done when they had last communicated over Skype. The meeting with the entity and all the worry about Belle that had ensued must have done more of a number on him than Joseph had anticipated.

Then again… Joseph looked down at himself. Leaving the priesthood hadn’t exactly been good for him, either. It was probably easier just to say that things had gone downhill for both of them since they had last worked together. Both of them lonely and disillusioned until Belle had come into their lives and begun turning things upside down through no real fault of her own.

Well, Belle hadn’t exactly come into Joseph’s life, only by proxy, but now that she was there, he really wouldn’t have it any other way. Despite the desperate circumstances they’d now found themselves in, the case had given Joseph a new lease of life and a purpose that he had not had for a long time, ever since his last case of this calibre, and he was determined not to fail her.

Gold smiled as he saw Joseph approaching, but the greeting between the two men was still a little awkward, having not seen each other in person for so long. Joseph gave a huff of laughter; it was almost as if they’d been internet dating and were now meeting each other in person for the first time, although they’d known each other for so long before now and had been through so many weird and wonderful experiences together.

“So, what’s your plan?” Joseph asked once they were well on their way to Storybrooke and there was no chance of Gold getting distracted by the case and landing them in a ditch or on the pavement.

“Well, I’m not entirely sure that it’s possible yet,” Gold admitted. “That’s why I need your expertise.”

“I’m listening.” It wasn’t as if they had anything else to do to make the drive to Storybrooke go any quicker.

“Speaking hypothetically, if you know how a demon, entity, dark thing from beyond time and light, etc, was summoned, can you reverse engineer a way to send it back where it came from?”

Joseph nodded.

“Summoning and banishing are closely related, but given that everything in the world follows the entropic principle, banishing is a lot harder than summoning. Things that have been summoned to our world don’t tend to enjoy being sent back from whence they came.”

Gold nodded slowly. “Yes, I think we might have a fight on our hands with the Dark One,” he said. “It was pretty determined to stay within the bloodline.”

“I suppose the next thing would be to work out whether it actually wants to be in the bloodline or not,” Joseph mused. “Depending on the method that Nimue used to summon it in the first place, it could be that it is bound to the bloodline and condemned to remain within the family, and our freeing it and sending it back into the ether would be a nice reprieve.”

Gold just gave him an incredulous look and Joseph shrugged.

“It was worth a shot.”

“I don’t think it’ll go quietly. It said that Nimue had freed it from a prison of darkness.”

“Not exactly encouraging,” Joseph agreed.

They fell back into silence for a little while, and Joseph began to mull over all the new information that he had learned about the entity.

“Continuing with your hypothetical situation of banishing the spirit in the same way that it was summoned, how do you think that it was summoned?” he asked Gold eventually.

“You know that ceremonial sword you’ve found out a lot about?”

“Yes.”

“And the dagger that Belle keeps having dreams about?”

“Yes.”

“And the fact that in the dreams, there’s blood on the dagger, and Belle knows that it’s hers?”

“Yes.” Joseph paused. “You think that Nimue made a blood sacrifice using the sword to summon the entity?”

“Precisely.”

“And us making a blood sacrifice with the same sword will help to send it back.”

“If your logic prevails.”

“Right.”

The car fell silent again for a long time before Joseph spoke again, trying to take in the magnitude of what Gold had just told him.

“I thought you said that you didn’t have any idea what I was talking about when I kept going on about a ceremonial sword that had been passed down through your family for generations. I did think that it was Excalibur at one point. I’m still not entirely convinced that it’s not.”

“I don’t have any idea,” Gold said. “I’ve never seen such a blade and I don’t remember the aunts making any mention of it, or my father for that matter. But the entity said that was how the bloodline was broken - my father broke the blade.”

Joseph nodded. “Yes, Belle thought that might be how it had happened.”

“I think the fact that the blade is broken is the only reason that the entity hasn’t returned to me,” Gold mused. “There’s something in it that prevents it from simply hopping across.”

Joseph gave his friend an alarmed look, but Gold’s attention was on the road in front of him.

“You know, you’re rather too calm about this.”

“I’m not. I’m absolutely terrified but since Belle is also terrified, probably with more reason to be since the thing’s inside her, one of us has to try and stay calm and brave in the face of everything that’s happening.”

“Have you heard from Belle?”

Gold shook his head.

“No. She’s not returning any of my calls and she’s not answering the door. I’ve seen that she’s ok, I caught a glimpse of her through the curtains in her apartment, but as far as I can tell she hasn’t left it since that night.” He gave a long sigh. “I just want to make sure she’s all right. I want to be able to reassure her that no matter what happens, everything’s going to be fine in the end, but I can’t because I don’t know that.”

Joseph didn’t know that either, so he wasn’t going to be much use when it came to giving anyone any reassurance. All things considered, he was even less convinced of their pursuit being successful thanks to all the various experiences that he’d had before. All the same, there was something in the back of his mind telling him that this time he wouldn’t and couldn’t fail, and if blind faith in himself was what was needed to get him through it, then he would pray for a miracle and draw that strength from somewhere.

“Maybe I could talk to her,” he suggested. “You said that you thought she was scared of it happening again and the entity doing something irretrievable. She’s always been scared of hurting you, I can tell you that much. But I’m different. I’m not related to the bloodline and I’m definitely not AB negative so I don’t think that the entity will pay me much mind.”

Gold seemed to consider it for a long moment before he nodded.

“Yes. I think that’s a good idea.”

X

The rest of the drive to Storybrooke was uneventful, and Joseph eventually nodded off, feeling the effects of jetlag already. It was certainly going to be an interesting few days if he was always falling asleep when the action was happening. Gold woke him with a nudge to his shoulder when they arrived at his home, and Joseph looked up at the grandiose pink place.

“It’s haunted, isn’t it?” he said plainly. “I’m sure the only reason that you would choose to live in a house like this was to prove that it wasn’t haunted.”

“Restless suicide in 1832,” Gold said cheerily. “I haven’t heard a peep out of whoever it is since I’ve been in though, so I think I can safely say that one’s just a rumour.”

Joseph rolled his eyes. “Either that, or your reputation precedes you and all the ghosts have just accepted that you’re not going to believe in their existence so they’ve given up before they’ve begun.”

Gold shrugged. “Possibly.”

Joseph did have to admit that there wasn’t anything particularly sinister about the house when he got inside; he usually always had a nose for these things. After he’d settled in and they’d eaten, he decided that it was probably best to get going on his plan to talk to Belle as soon as possible. There was no use in putting these things off, and he wanted to get to her before she went to bed for the night and the entity might possibly come to the fore once more. Gold gave him directions, hanging back in the diner to keep watch in case something drastic happened. Joseph really hoped that it wouldn’t.

He looked up at the apartment above the library. The library itself showed no signs of having been opened over the past couple of days, and a hand-written sign tacked to the door explained that due to unforeseen circumstances, the place would be remaining closed indefinitely. Joseph felt a pang of empathy. He hoped that Gold’s plan to get the entity out of Belle and back wherever it came from in the first place would work, so that she could get back to her regular life if nothing else.

He mounted the stairs and knocked gently on the door. There was no response; he hadn’t really expected one, but he could hear someone moving about furtively on the other side of the wood. It was either Belle trying not to be heard, or the entity had taken hold and was being as suspicious as ever.

“Belle,” he called. “Belle, it’s Joseph Macavoy. Can I talk to you please?” He paused. “You don’t have to open the door if you don’t want, but I’d like to hear your voice and make sure you’re ok. I haven’t heard from you for a while, and now I’ve come over to help Gold with the case.”

There was again no reply, but the footsteps in the apartment came closer.

“Belle? Are you in there?”

“Joseph?”

The voice was small and muffled by wood, but it was undeniably Belle’s, and Joseph breathed a sigh of relief.

“Hello Belle. It’s nice to talk to you in person.”

“You’re really here?”

“I’m really here. My flight came in at lunchtime.”

“Rum left me a message, he said that you were coming. I can’t believe you’re really here.”

“I’m not sure I believe I’m really here yet.” He paused. “Rum’s been worried about you, you know.”

“I know.”

She didn’t say anything else, but then Joseph heard the scrape of the door lock and a moment later it opened. It was still held with three heavy-duty security chains, but Belle’s face appeared in the gap. Her eyes were red-rimmed from tears with heavy dark circles under them, her dark hair greasy and unkempt.

Joseph smiled and extended a hand.

“A pleasure to meet you, Belle.”

Belle just looked at his hand, but didn’t take it.

“How long have you been awake?” Joseph asked.

Belle didn’t reply, looking away.

“Did Rum tell you what happened?” she mumbled.

“I got the gist of it, yes.”

She bit her lip. “I haven’t slept since.”

Before Joseph could make any reply, the door had closed in his face. He heard the chains being drawn across, and then he was face to face with Belle properly.

“Come in,” she said. “If you dare.”

Joseph stepped across the threshold. “I’m not scared of you, Belle.”

She snorted. “You should be.”

She closed the door behind him but she didn’t lock it, and Joseph looked around the space. Empty coffee cups littered every surface.

Belle sank down onto the sofa, her head in her hands.

“I said I couldn’t bear it if I ever hurt him,” she muttered.

“You didn’t hurt him,” Joseph assured her. Belle shook her head.

“It was too close a call,” she said. “I knew that this was a bad idea. I knew I shouldn’t let myself get close to him, to anyone. It only ever ends badly.”

“We’ve got a plan, Belle. We’re going to get rid of this thing. I promise.”

It was a bad promise to make. He had no idea if he’d be successful or what might happen to Belle herself throughout the process, but looking at her now, so rundown and dejected, so very miserable, he knew that he had to give her some hope.

Belle shook her head again.

“I’m just about ready to quit,” she said. “I can’t live with this anymore. I can’t live with myself anymore knowing that at a moment’s notice I might do something terrible! Think about it, how can Rum and I ever go to bed together again knowing that the last time it happened, well, you know what happened the last time.”

Joseph sat down on the sofa beside her, putting an arm around her shoulders gingerly. Instead of shaking him off, like her brittle stance seemed to suggest she would, she melted into his embrace, like a dam breaking and a flood of tears suddenly pouring forth.

“Please don’t give up, Belle,” Joseph soothed. “Please. We will get you through this and you’ll come out of the other side. You’ve fought against this thing for so long. Even the Dark One itself is impressed by how viciously you’ve fought it. You can’t let it win now. Not when we’re so close to finding a solution.”

“I’m just so tired!” Belle cried, burying her face in his chest. Joseph remembered their Skype conversations when she had confided in all her fears to him, fears that were rapidly coming true, and all those times that he had wished that he could reach across the miles and comfort her.

“Sleep,” he soothed her. “I’ll keep watch over you.”

“But the Thing…”

“It doesn’t want me,” Joseph said. “I’m safe. And if it does go after what it does want, then I’ll be here to stop it. Besides, I’ve got jetlag. I’m hardly likely to sleep tonight even if I wanted to.”

Belle gave a weak huff of laughter, but eventually, her breathing quietened and she fell into a light slumber.

Joseph made her comfortable on the sofa, very aware that he probably shouldn’t be sitting there with his friend’s lover sleeping in his arms, and texted Gold to let him know that Belle was all right, before settling down to wait and watch until she woke up.


	34. Chapter 34

Whilst Belle slept on, curled up on the sofa and covered in blankets, Joseph pottered about her apartment, clearing up the coffee mugs and tidying books and papers into piles. He was in two minds about doing it; after all, he had only met her officially a couple of hours ago and she probably wouldn’t appreciate him touching her things, but he needed something to occupy his mind.

It wasn’t that he feared falling asleep himself and ending up in a similar position to the one that the poor unsuspecting Gold had found himself in a couple of nights previous. After his nap in the car on the way back from the airport he was very awake, and whilst he was certain that he was going to pay for his wakefulness later, he welcomed it at that moment.

It also wasn’t that he feared a meeting with the entity. He’d already established in his mind that whatever the entity might want, he was not it, and therefore he thought he might have a better chance of getting it to see reason.

On the other hand, he knew that Gold was probably protected from the entity by something - the fact that the mysterious blade was still broken, probably - and Joseph had no such armour. It depended if the entity was willing to perform a little collateral damage to get to what it wanted, then he would be right in the firing line if he tried to stop it, and having reassured Belle that he would be safe from the thing, he didn’t want her to wake up and find that this had not in fact been the case.

No, ultimately he didn’t fear a meeting with the entity. He’d seen a lot in his time, and from what Gold had described from his own meeting with the Dark One, it would be nothing that he had not experienced before.

He had more experience of these kind of presences than Gold did. Gold’s career had always focussed more on debunking and finding things that were not as supernatural as they seemed. Joseph’s had always been the opposite, and so he’d seen an awful lot of inexplicable things. They never got any easier to deal with, one never really became used to them, but it was possible to learn patterns and ways of communication that would make any encounters easier.

To give him something to do, Joseph grabbed a blank sheet of paper and pencil and began sketching out the details that Gold had given him earlier in the day, trying to come up with some kind of plan of action. Over the course of their journey back to Storybrooke and the rest of the day, Gold had told him as much as he could of his conversation with the Dark One, and it had been rich with clues.

They already knew that the blade was key. It was what had summoned the entity in the first place and bound it to the bloodline, and it was what had severed the entity, and it was what was preventing the entity coming back to Gold.

Re-forging this broken blade, wherever it might be, would hopefully allow them to banish the entity again, but at the same time, it would negate whatever protection that Gold was currently afforded. Then there was the problem of the blade being lost in the first place. And in two pieces that probably weren’t stored in the same location, if Malcolm had been clever about it. Malcolm had been very clever in some respects. He would have wanted to prevent the entity jumping back into himself if he couldn’t get it to pass straight into Rum.

It made sense that the sword would still be in Scotland; perhaps still in the place that the Golds had occupied before their move to America. There would be no point in Malcolm bringing it with him if he was trying to escape from its influence and putting an ocean between him and it was an effective way of distancing himself from it.

Perhaps that was part of the reason why the entity had been bound to that house until Belle’s aunt had come along with the same blood type and it had sensed the opportunity. Breaking the blade might have removed the entity from Malcolm, but it was still bound to the blade until Malcolm himself died.

On the other hand, maybe part of the sword was hidden here, and part of it was back in Scotland. Separating the pieces by such a large distance would also be an effective deterrent.

Joseph sat back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair, looking down at his scribbled notes again. They needed to find that blade, and they had no idea where it might be. There were probably some clues in what the entity had told Gold, but Joseph’s mind was already overworked from trying to piece everything together, and something in the back of his mind was telling him that he was really going to need a drink if he was going to get to the bottom of all this.

Movement caught the corner of his eye and he held his breath as he turned to Belle on the couch, but nothing sinister was going on, she had just shifted in her sleep, turning onto her stomach and burying her face in the sofa scatter cushions. It was only a few seconds later that she moved again, and Joseph could see the little frown line between her brows even in slumber. He watched her carefully; restless sleep was often an indicator of something happening beneath the surface and he wondered if he was going to meet the entity after all.

Belle grimaced and Joseph got up out of the chair, taking half a step towards her, because it looked like she was in pain and he wanted to be ready to wake her up at a moment’s notice. He paused where he was; if the entity was in the process of taking over then it might do more harm than good to wake her up prematurely.

Suddenly, his phone began to vibrate in his pocket and he grabbed it, juggling with the thing in his haste to stop it making noise and possibly disturbing Belle.

It was Gold calling, and considering that it had just passed midnight, Joseph thought that he was within his rights to be slightly concerned.

“Gold?” he hissed, going over to the window so that he could be as far away from Belle as possible and not risk waking her, but still be able to keep an eye on her at the same time. “What’s going on?”

_“Is Belle still asleep?”_ Gold’s voice was quiet and furtive, barely more than a whisper, and Joseph’s brow furrowed at his secretive manner. There was an urgency in his voice, and Joseph found himself wishing that he could be in two places at once so that he could deal with whatever was going on in Gold’s place and stay with Belle at the same time.

“Yes,” he said, looking back at her again, the frown lines still etched into her face but still in slumber. “Although if you keep calling in the middle of the night then she might not be for much longer. Are you all right? What’s going on out there?”

_“It’s the shadow,”_ Gold said.

Joseph felt a shiver run down his spine. The shadow was a relatively new development in the case as far as he was concerned, but that was only because Gold hadn’t told him about his history of nocturnal visitors until comparatively recently. Belle had been the only person he’d shared the memories with until a couple of weeks ago, and although the revelation had worked wonders for Joseph in terms of understanding Gold’s motivations and reasoning, it had opened up a whole new can of worms in the process.

“Did you see it?” Joseph asked. “What was it doing?”

_“I can see it right now,”_ Gold said. _“I’m staring it in its creepy face. It’s not doing anything, it’s just hanging around outside the window.”_

“Right.” Joseph did have a possibly morbid desire to see the shadow and perhaps interact with it himself, but at the same time, he knew that he couldn’t leave Belle alone whilst she slept; she was relying on him to keep her safe from whatever the entity might make her do whilst it was in control.

Still, the shadow being present at Gold’s window did explain the pained expression on Belle’s sleeping face. If she was fighting with it subconsciously and pushing it out like the entity, according to Gold, had said that she’d done before, it would certainly account for why her sleep was not restful. As terrible as it sounded to want the entity to return to her, it might help her get some rest during the time her eyes were closed, as long as they could keep it from taking over her body entirely. If she woke up feeling just as exhausted as when she went to sleep, then there would have been no point to the entire endeavour.

“It’s not showing any signs of maliciousness?” Joseph asked.

_“No. But then it never has done. The aunts kept it out with the circle of light when I was a child and I think that the broken blade is preventing it from doing anything now. That doesn’t stop me from knowing that it has malevolent intentions though. There’s just something about it; there always has been.”_

Joseph twitched back the thin curtains over Belle’s living room windows, but there was nothing to see outside, and it would be hopeless even trying to look for Gold’s house at this distance during a cloudy, murky night.

“Well, Belle’s still asleep and it looks like she’s fighting against it pretty determinedly,” he told Gold. “Maybe if you ignore the shadow it will go away. If it’s not making any move to get to you then it probably knows it can’t do anything. Just close the curtains and back up.”

On the other end of the phone, Gold gave a snort of weak laughter. _“Don’t pay attention and it’ll get bored, you mean?”_

“It’s worth a try.”

_“I suppose I’ve never seen it leave before,”_ Gold said. _“When I was a boy I just used to hide under the bedcovers with my eyes screwed shut hoping that it would go away, and the one time that I saw it as an adult, I pretty much did the same.”_

Joseph tore his attention away from the window as Belle stirred in her sleep, rolling over on the sofa again and beginning to toss and turn, kicking the blankets off. Something was definitely going on inside her head, and Joseph ventured to take a couple more steps closer to her.

“Just stay put,” he said to Gold. “It’s never got you before so I don’t think it’ll get you now. Whatever’s protecting you from the entity is probably protecting you from a weakened shade of it as well.”

_“I hope you’re…”_ Gold tailed off.

“Gold? Gold, are you there?”

_“It vanished,”_ Gold said faintly.

Joseph looked up and almost dropped the phone on seeing the spectre hovering beside him, barely an inch away. Pitch black, showing a vaguely human form that never seemed to stay the same from one moment to the next. Burning yellow pits where the eyes should have been.

“Yes,” he muttered to Gold. “It’s come back here.”

He cut off the call, much to Gold’s protestations on the other end of the line, and stood up from where he had dropped into a half-crouch beside Belle, taking a deep breath and facing the shadow.

“What do you want?” he asked it.

The shadow didn’t reply, but then again, he hadn’t really expected it to. Whatever the entity was and wherever it had come from, it needed a host in order to do anything and to be able to interact with the rest of the corporeal world.

Its evil yellow gaze looked over in Belle’s direction; she was curled up tight in a ball now and she seemed to be muttering to herself, in a language that Joseph couldn’t make out but that definitely wasn’t English.

The shadow reached out one spectral hand towards Belle’s face and on instinct, Joseph lunged for it, trying to stop it from merging with her again out of a desire to try and prevent Belle going through any more pain at its hands and to try and communicate with it again.

As was probably to be expected, he didn’t make contact, falling straight through the shadow and landing heavily flat on his face. He looked up just in time to see the shadow touch Belle’s cheek and vanish as suddenly as it had arrived in the apartment.

That was the moment when Belle let out a piercing scream. Her eyes flew open and she sat straight upright on the sofa, and for the briefest of moments, her eyes flashed full dark obsidian before returning to their normal blue. She was panting heavily, cold sweat dripping down her brow, and Joseph got back to his feet, crouching in front of her.

“It’s ok,” he said. “I’m here.”

Belle scrubbed her face with her hands and ran them through her mussed hair.

“It was the same dream,” she muttered. “The same nightmare I had the first night I stayed over at Rum’s place. Chased down by a shadow, a bloody knife in my hands. My blood.”

Joseph grimaced. “Well, the shadow I can probably account for,” he said. Belle looked at him, and he saw her shoulders sag when she realised what had happened. “Think of it as a good sign,” Joseph pressed, trying to look on the bright side, although all things considered he wasn’t really feeling too optimistic himself, but one of them had to be. “You’re much stronger against this thing than you know, if you can push it out of your head like that whilst you’re asleep.”

Belle sighed. “I know. I just wish it didn’t keep coming back. Is Gold all right?”

Joseph nodded. “Yes. He saw the shadow outside his window but it didn’t try to attack him. It just creeped him out.”

“Thank God for that.” Belle leaned into Joseph’s side. “Will you stay, please?” she asked. “I just don’t want to be alone after that nightmare.”

“Of course.”

They both fell silent, and Joseph mulled over what he had just experienced.

“Belle?” he began eventually. “Were you talking in your dream?”

Belle nodded slowly.

“I was calling for help,” she said. “Although now that I think about it, there was no-one around and I was outside in the middle of nowhere; I could see that there was no-one around for miles, so I don’t know why I was yelling. Why do you ask?”

“You were talking in your sleep.”

“Oh. I don’t think that’s ever happened before. Rum certainly didn’t mention it. What did I say?”

Joseph made a face. “I don’t know. It was very quiet and it, erm, wasn’t English.”

A thought occurred to him and he sprang up off the sofa, grabbing the papers he had been making notes on.

“I think it was Scots Gaelic,” he said. “The entity has spoken to us in Scots Gaelic before and it probably learned the language from one of its hosts. We know that Nimue was the first to summon it and she probably did so using a blade and a blood sacrifice, a sacrifice of her own blood that bound the Dark One into the bloodline. We don’t know much about her but we know she lived a very long time ago and she lived in Scotland so we can assume she spoke Scots Gaelic as her first language. We know she called on the Dark One to help her save her family, she had good intentions.” He paused and looked up at Belle as the pieces finally began to click into place. “I think that your nightmares are showing us how the entity was summoned in the first place.”

Belle looked at him, her eyes bleary and sleep-deprived. “Is that a good thing?” she hedged.

“Yes,” Joseph said firmly. “Because if we know how it was summoned, then we can work out how to banish it as well.”


	35. Chapter 35

Belle slept fitfully in little bursts for the rest of the night; although a few hours of uninterrupted slumber would definitely have been better for her, Joseph was just glad of whatever rest that she could get. By the time the sun was coming up, the wakefulness inspired by the eventful night and his own jetlag was beginning to wear off and he was ready for bed himself. He must have looked it too, as when Belle woke properly and began to potter about the kitchen, she gave him an apologetic smile.

“I’m sorry about last night,” she said. “Thank you so much for staying with me. What with everything that’s been happening over the last few days, I was really at the end of my rope.”

“We will get through this,” Joseph promised her, standing up from where he had been sitting on the sofa with her all night, stretching the cricks out of his spine. “And please answer Gold’s calls, he’s so worried about you.”

“I know. I can hear that from his messages. I just…” Belle sighed, staring at the kettle as if looking at it rather than Joseph would make the whole thing easier. “I just sometimes feel that it would be better if we’d never met. I don’t want to put him in danger again.”

“If you’d never met, then you wouldn’t have as far as you have with learning about this entity and trying to fight it,” Joseph pointed out. “None of us would. I would still be over in the UK with only my whisky and bad memories for company and Gold would still be here drowning his sorrows in that bar you first saw him in every evening. The entity would still be searching him out, looking for its bloodline. I think that you meeting him and us all ending up where we are now was probably inevitable.”

Belle sighed, handing him a cup of tea. “I know. I know that it probably wouldn’t have made any difference, but I can’t help feeling bad that it’s all happened like this. I just wish that there was some other way.”

“I think we all wish that there was an easier way,” Joseph admitted. “I know I’ve done several times over the years.”

“It’s different for you though,” Belle said. “You’ve got faith in a higher power that’s making all the big decisions. You have faith that everything’s going to turn out all right in the end.”

“I don’t,” Joseph said. It was something he didn’t really want to admit, especially not to Belle when he was in the middle of reassuring her that everything was going to be all right in the end, but if this venture came down to him having to do something to rid her of this entity, then it would only be fair for her to know where he stood. “I’ve got faith in a higher power, certainly. I’ve always had that and even though I’m no longer a priest, I will always have that faith in God. But when it comes down to it, He’s not the one making the decisions. That’s all on us, and I’ve got a little less faith in my own decision-making than I have in His.”

Belle didn’t have a reply to that, and they stood drinking tea in silence for a long while.

“Look, Belle,” Joseph began again, realising that they’d ended up going in the wrong direction and he needed to get them back on track. Why and when control of the situation and decision-making had fallen to the alcoholic priest, he didn’t know, but since Belle and Gold were both in rather bad places at the moment, he was going to have to step up to the plate. “If we’re going to get rid of this thing, you, me, and Gold, then we should probably all settle down and start talking about it. There’s no use in putting it off or avoiding it as that will only prolong the agony. The sooner we can make a plan, then the sooner the entity will be banished again and the sooner you and Gold can be together without anything getting in the way of that.”

Belle nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “Whilst I’m hiding away in here trying to stay awake for a record number of hours, I might try and kid myself into thinking that I’m protecting everyone else, but it’s not exactly good for me and it’s not exactly making any progress.”

“You can’t live like this forever,” Joseph agreed. It was a harsh statement, but it was a true one. Belle had been understandably distraught after the incident at Gold’s place, and naturally she wasn’t thinking straight about it.

“No, I can’t.” Belle paused. “Are you staying here long?” she asked.

“For as long as I need to.”

“And you’re staying with Gold?”

“Yes.”

“Good. At least I know he’s got some kind of protection if the entity decides to come out to play again.” Belle’s voice was hard and brittle, full of inward hatred. Joseph didn’t know what use he would be as Gold’s bodyguard against the entity, but if that was what made Belle feel better, then he would do it.

“So, I’ll see you over at Gold’s later today?” he hedged. Belle gave a slow nod, as if she didn’t want to commit herself, but then finally decided that it would be best to just bite the bullet and go for it, or else her problems would never be solved.

“Yes. I’ll be there.”

X

Gold was pacing up and down the hallway, stopping to look out of the window every few seconds in anticipation of Belle walking up the drive.

“She said that she would be here,” Joseph said from the kitchen. His friend had spent most of the morning catching up on sleep after their rather eventful night, but Gold had been too anxious to return to bed after the shadow sighting and too worked up about Belle’s imminent arrival to catnap afterwards. He’d spent most of the day going over all the notes that Joseph had made during the night and adding them to his own knowledge. He had a theory that he really wanted to run by the other two, but every time he thought about it, the more far-fetched it seemed to be. Considering he was going off the testimony of the entity, which had been rather angry at the time, he didn’t know how much he could trust it.

“Please stop pacing,” Joseph said as Gold came back into the kitchen for what must have been the seventeenth time within the last ten minutes. “You’re making me dizzy.”

Gold duly stopped his pacing, instead stationing himself next to the window so that he would see the moment that Belle came into view, walking up the driveway towards the pink house. Not that he really knew what he was going to do when he did see her. He didn’t want to open the front door too early or else he’d look like a desperate lunatic, but at the same time, he would be so happy to see her that he really would be a desperate lunatic by the time she arrived.

“Gold. She will be here.”

Joseph’s voice was stern and for a moment Gold could hear the preacher who had spoken to his flock in vaulted Catholic churches before he was whisked away on his high profile investigatory career. He gave in to his friend’s unspoken plea for him to come away from the window and went back into the kitchen, sitting down at the table and looking over all the paperwork that was spread out over there.

“There are some parts of this that I don’t think we ought to tell Belle,” Joseph was saying, sifting through the papers and clearing away a few of them off the table. Gold raised an eyebrow.

“Considering that this thing is inside her head, don’t you think that she deserves to know it all?” he asked.

“Most of it, yes,” Joseph said. “But if we work on the principle that the entity has access to Belle’s memories, which it seems to have from your conversation with it, then we need to assume that it knows everything she knows. Therefore, if we tell Belle exactly how we’re going to attempt to destroy the entity, then it will know and may well take over Belle in an attempt to stop us.”

“Right. Yes. I can see your point there.”

“We should probably only share with her the things that the entity already knows from its time with Malcolm and when it became untethered and was in shadow form permanently.”

Gold nodded. “Yes, I see your point.” He flicked through the few papers that Joseph had judiciously decided to keep hidden. Luckily, since most of what they knew had come from the entity’s mouth anyway, there wasn’t a lot to have to conceal.

The knock on the door sent them both jumping out of their seats, both of them set on edge by the events of the night, even though they knew that it would only be Belle. As Gold went to answer it, he could feel his palms starting to sweat and he wiped them surreptitiously on his trousers before finally opening the door.

It was Belle, and Gold was so glad to see her alive and comparatively well, although still sporting the dark circles of tiredness under her eyes that had been so apparent when he had first met her all those months ago, that he didn’t know what to do. She gave a little shy smile.

“Hey Rum.”

“Hi.”

He realised that stepping aside to let her in was probably a good idea. “I didn’t think you would come,” he blurted out, before mentally kicking himself for the lack of tact. Belle just gave a soft laugh.

“To be honest, I didn’t either. But Joseph’s right; we need to work together if we’re going to finish this thing once and for all, and I’ll never be free of it if I stay shut up all the time.”

Gold really did have a lot to thank Joseph for when it came to Belle.

He led her through into the kitchen and after making sure that everyone was well supplied with tea, it was time for their conference to begin and an action plan to be made.

“We’ve worked out that the blade is the key,” Joseph began. “We’ve got no idea what it is, what it looks like, or where its various component parts are, but we’re going to need to find those component parts if we’re going to get anywhere. The bloodline was broken when Malcolm broke the blade. The entity wants the bloodline restored and the easiest way to do that will be to re-forge the blade.

“Now, the blade is in at least two parts and I believe that one of those parts is still back in Scotland, hidden somewhere in the house that the Gold family used to inhabit, and that Belle’s aunt stayed in. That would explain why it couldn’t move from that house until the correct blood type came along to give it a temporary host. So, we don’t need to worry about that part of the blade for the moment.”

“Which brings us to the second part or parts,” Gold said. “Which Malcolm probably brought over here with him to get the maximum distance between the parts.” He paused; here was where they began to rely on the knowledge that the entity itself had imparted to them. “When I asked the Dark One about the blade’s location, it said that Malcolm had taken the secret to his grave. I think that it meant it literally and that Malcolm kept the other half of the blade on his person until he died, and that he was buried with it.”

There was a long period of silence whilst the group gathered around the table let the full meaning of what Gold was saying sink in.

“Where’s your father buried?” Belle asked eventually, her voice a little choked.

“I don’t know,” Gold admitted. “Well, at least, up until three hours ago I didn’t know. When he died, I just received the news that he was dead from my aunts; I hadn’t seen him since I was three years old at that point, so he was pretty much dead to me already. There was no funeral, no mourning. We just continued our lives as normal. However, my aunts knew. If they knew about the sword and its capabilities and they wanted to keep me safe, then they probably wanted to make sure they knew where the sword’s component parts were so that they could keep an eye on it.”

He took up Aunt Elvira’s journal from the middle of the table and opened it to a page near the back, showing a map with some precise measurements in feet and inches and a classic X marking the spot.

“He’s in an unmarked grave at the edge of a cemetery in upstate New York,” Gold said.

Joseph and Belle looked at each other and then at Gold. Joseph was the first to speak.

“Well, it looks like we’re going on a road trip.” 


	36. Chapter 36

“I have done many weird and wonderful things in my career so far in the pursuit of the truth, but I can safely say that grave robbery is not one of them.”

From the back of the Cadillac, Joseph had to give a snort of laughter at Gold’s comment. Belle shifted against him in her sleep but didn’t wake, readjusting her head where it was pillowed on his lap and smiling a little. Maybe the comment had somehow got through to her unconsciously. 

They had been in two minds about whether to bring Belle with them on the expedition to New York state to find one of the pieces of the sword, as they had no idea how the entity might react to being in the presence of the blade that had bound it in the first place, and the last thing that any of them, Belle especially, wanted was for anyone to get hurt as a result of messing with what they couldn’t hope to understand. 

In the end though, it had been decided that they really ought to stick together, and neither Gold nor Joseph particularly wanted to leave her alone in Storybrooke. At least if she was with them, then they would know immediately if anything was up.

It was an eight-hour drive from Storybrooke to the approximate location of Malcolm’s final resting place; it could have been slightly shorter but they’d quickly accepted that since Joseph could barely drive a car in the UK, having him drive Gold’s prized Cadillac on the other side of the road along an unfamiliar route was fraught with danger. Belle had nodded off in the back, unable to keep herself awake any longer, and Joseph had elected to stay with her in case the entity made an appearance and possibly threw them off the road. The last thing that any of them wanted was Gold to be distracted from driving by any malicious presences.

Thankfully, nothing had happened so far; Joseph was of the distinct impression that since Belle’s sleep was little more than a doze, she probably wasn’t under far enough for the Dark One to make an appearance.

They made a strange little party, he supposed, not that anyone had paid them any mind one the couple of occasions that they had stopped for comfort breaks along the way. If anyone knew what they were on their way to do, then perhaps they would have been the subject of a few more raised eyebrows. Considering that the trunk was full of shovels and black plastic, people could be forgiven for thinking that they were going to bury a body, not unearth one.

“We’re not really grave-robbing in the traditional sense,” Joseph pointed out. “We’re not stealing his body to sell to medical students.”

“I can’t think of any medical students who would want him,” Gold muttered. “I doubt they’d find much of interest in his brain. Except perhaps the origins of incipient criminality and drunkenness.”

“There won’t be much brain left,” Belle pointed out sleepily. She pushed herself back up into a seated position, opening her eyes. She looked a little bit more refreshed than she had done when they had begun their journey, and Joseph was grateful for that. Although they might not be body-snatching, what they were doing still wasn’t entirely legal and they should probably all be on their guard whilst they executed the unorthodox procedure.

“He’s been dead for over forty years,” Belle continued, looking out of the window at the late afternoon sun. “Hopefully all the squishy bits will be nicely decomposed by now and we’ll just be left with a fairly clean skeleton.” She shuddered. “I’m glad I’m staying in the car keeping watch whilst you two are doing the nasty bit.”

Despite bringing Belle along for all their safety, there was no sense in tempting fate any more than they had to, so it had been unanimously decided that she probably shouldn’t take place in the actual unearthing of the dread blade fragment. Belle was not at all displeased by this.

“I think that stealing anything from graves isn’t going to make us very popular with whoever owns the cemetery,” Gold said. “The things we do.”

Joseph didn’t respond. A small part of him was wondering what would happen if it turned out that they’d misinterpreted the entity and the blade fragment was not in fact in Malcolm’s grave with him. They’d be back to square one, and they’d have dug up a grave for no reason into the bargain.

“We’re nearly there,” Gold said. The buildings of the town that they had been driving through for the past few minutes were beginning to thin out, and the GPS on the dashboard was showing that they were nearing their final destination. In the distance, Joseph could see the all too familiar sight of a cemetery in the distance, white stones against dark green grass. It seemed like it had been there for a long time, getting more and more sprawling and untidy as it continued to expand in order to hold all its permanent residents.

There was a small car park beside the cemetery, thankfully empty, and they pulled in.

“We might as well try and find him now,” Gold said, although no-one made any move to get out of the car. “We don’t want to be waiting till darkness falls and then possibly getting the wrong place because we can’t see.”

“Yeah.”

Still no-one moved. Now that they were actually here, it all became much more real. They were actually doing this, here with a purpose rather than simply going on a road trip in search of something they couldn’t really define.

Eventually Gold broke the spell of silence and stillness that had fallen over them, taking Elvira’s journal from the passenger seat beside him and opening it to the map at the back.

“According to this he should be about halfway down the western edge,” he said. “Precise measurements down to the inch.”

“I never asked, but how did you manage to source a trundle wheel of all things?” Belle asked. “Is that another relic from your investigating days?”

“You never know what you might need,” Gold said sagely. “If you’re taking a scientific approach then scientific equipment is always handy. You get several claims of people having houses built over ancient burial grounds causing strange rumblings throughout the house in the night, but then you get your hands on some maps and some measuring equipment and you realise that they’re actually living on top of a subway line.”

“Right.” Belle didn’t seem entirely convinced, but Joseph could understand that the whole experience was getting to be rather overwhelming when everything that had happened started building up, and her state of sleep deprivation and getting by on catnaps couldn’t have helped at all.

After a few more minutes of silence, Gold galvanised himself into action, getting out of the Cadillac and opening the trunk, taking out the old trundle wheel and carrying it towards the cemetery gates. They were closed but not locked, and as Joseph and Belle got out of the car and followed him, they could see him examining the padlock carefully since they would likely have to break in later once night had truly fallen. Luckily it didn’t seem to be a large enough town to have any kind of constant security in place around their cemetery. It was a sleepy, backwater town altogether, and Joseph wondered how Malcolm had come to be here in the first place. It wasn’t exactly the first place he thought of when he imagined where a man on the run looking to reinvent himself would come. It was easier to disappear in the big cities: New York, Boston and the like.

He put the thought away and followed Gold around the edge of the cemetery, Belle bringing up the rear. They made a strange procession, stopping every few moments to consult the map and take measurements with the trundle wheel.

“I think we’re here,” Gold said eventually, but there was a dubiousness in his voice that made Joseph think he wasn’t entirely convinced.

“Are you sure?” he prompted.

“Seventy-five per cent. Stay here. I’ll measure it again and see if I come out in the same place.”

Joseph dutifully stood on the patch of ground that possibly housed Malcolm Gold, and watched as his son picked his way back to the cemetery entrance. Belle went over to a nearby pine tree, gathering some of the cones that had fallen at its base. At first Joseph thought that she was simply being whimsical, but then she returned and started to put a border of cones around where he was standing, marking out the rough dimensions of a coffin.

“It’s all very well us finding him now, but it won’t be much use when you come back in the dark and then can’t find your way back,” she said sagely, just as Gold came up to them with the trundle wheel again.

“Well, I think this is definitely him,” he said, and the two men began to help Belle with her pine cones, using the directions from the map to get the dimensions of Malcolm’s makeshift grave exactly right. Gold grabbed the final pine cone and placed it in the middle of the grave, exactly where the X was marked on the map.

“It makes sense to have a starting point,” he said, sitting back on his heels. Joseph looked down at their handiwork. It was somewhat crude, but in the interests of not drawing too much attention to themselves, it was going to have to do.

There was nothing more to be done before night fell and gave them the cover of darkness in which to perform their little thievery, and the three of them returned to the town, checking into the small inn that they’d selected the day before as a base. Now, it was just a waiting game.

X

“What’s the penalty for grave robbery these days?” Joseph asked as he followed Gold around the edge of the cemetery, flashlights bouncing off the worn headstones.

“I don’t know. I think we’d be more likely to be done for trespass than robbery. I suppose I might be able to use the argument that I’m related to the person that we’re digging up.”

“I’m not sure that’ll fly considering he’s in an unmarked grave and probably doesn’t have any identification on him,” Joseph pointed out. “On the other hand, since it is an unmarked grave, it’s likely that no-one’s going to be particularly bothered about us taking things out of it. Maybe we didn’t know it was a grave and we’re just treasure seekers out with a metal detector looking for relics. Which, when you think about it, we are.”

Gold just gave him an incredulous look. “We’ve still broken in though.”

Joseph glanced over his shoulder towards the cemetery gates that Gold had had to pick open, and the dark shape of the Cadillac beyond. He couldn’t see Belle in the car, but he knew that she was there, watching out for anyone who might come along and disturb them as they dug for victory.

“Let’s just get on with it,” he said with a shiver, grabbing the shovel and beginning to attack the earth. Luckily it had been raining the previous day and the ground was fairly soft, but it still took a while before either of them hit anything that could possibly be wood. Gold tapped it cautiously with his shovel.

“Do you think we can just break it? After four decades it should be pretty rotten.”

Joseph shrugged. “I suppose that the only thing we can do is try.”

Gingerly, Gold raised his shovel and smacked it down on the wooden coffin lid. There was the horrible wet croak of rotten wood giving way, and the stench of decay and decomposition filled the air, both men recoiling from it.

“Well, we’re in.”

Braving the fetid air, Joseph waved his torch over the hole that they had made, grimacing when the first thing he saw was a skeletal hand.

“You know, our hunch had better be correct,” he said, looking up at Gold. “I do not want to have to do this again elsewhere.”

“That makes two of us.” Gold crouched by the hole, poking a stick into it and disturbing the contents. “Although you never know, we could become famous. Driving all over America leaving a trail of opened graves in our wake.”

“Good to know that your sense of humour hasn’t improved since the last time we worked together, Gold.”

All the same, despite the gruesome circumstances, it was good to be working together again.

“Hold on.” Gold paused, probing gently with his stick again. “I think I’ve got something.”

“Something that might possibly be part of a ceremonial sword?”

“Well, it’s not as squishy as the rest of everything in here. Hand me the shovel.”

Joseph obeyed, and Gold levered the shovel into the hole. There was the faint but distinct clink of metal on metal. Joseph found himself holding his breath as Gold wriggled the shovel and finally shoved one gloved hand down into the grave, wrinkling his nose.

Finally, he came up triumphant, and showed Joseph his find.

It was the tip of a blade, about five inches in length, dirty and tarnished from its years in a coffin but still looking deceptively sharp. The metal was wavy, like a Freemason’s knife, just as Belle had described from her dream. And, just like she had dreamed, there was engraving on the blade, dark geometric patterns crusted with decay.

To have a theory about a sword, with part of it buried with Gold’s father, was one thing. To actually have it confirmed was quite another. For a moment neither of the men spoke; but then Gold sprung into action once more, wrapping the knife up in plastic brought for the purpose and slipping it into his inside pocket.

“Come on, let’s fill in this hole and get out of here. The sooner the better.”

They worked quickly to rectify the mess that they had made; it would still be obvious that someone had dug into the grave but at least they hadn’t left a gaping hole in the ground.

Joseph made his way back to the Cadillac as Gold locked up the cemetery behind them.

“Were you successful?” Belle asked.

Joseph nodded. The first piece of the puzzle had been found. Now all they had to do was find the rest of it.


	37. Chapter 37

They made their way back to the inn in a tense silence. Now that they had the first piece of the blade, it was clear that they were all expecting something to go wrong at a moment’s notice.

Belle was hyper alert, jumping at the slightest noise whenever the car ran over a surface that was a little bumpy, and Gold’s driving was slow and careful. It was as if their little adventure was hanging over them like a great big neon sign telling everyone in the vicinity that not only had they just been digging up unmarked graves, they were now in possession of a potentially dangerous relic, and a potentially dangerous entity that might pop up at any moment.

The inn was dark when they reached it, no lights on in any of the bedrooms. It was a small town, Joseph supposed, and its visitors were as quiet and sedate and respectable as its inhabitants. The main doors had been locked for the night, but Gold made quick work of them with his picks, just as he had done with the padlock on the cemetery gates.

“I’m slightly worried as to where you picked these skills up from,” Belle whispered as they crept inside and Gold locked up after them.

“Oh, you learn all kinds of things in our line of work,” Gold said airily. They made their way up the stairs towards their rooms, stopping in true comedic fashion when one of the steps creaked. Nothing happened; no-one came out of any rooms to chastise them for disturbing the peace or to ask them where the hell they’d been at this time of night, and Belle pressed her hands over her mouth to stop her from giggling.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said. “It’s just that we’re sneaking around like teenagers afraid of being caught out by our parents.”

It was funny, Joseph had to admit that, and since their investigation was turning out to be taking them to some rather dark places, they needed all the humour they could get.

Eventually they made it to the landing with no further incidents, and they split off to go into their separate rooms. Belle and Gold shared a soft kiss before he disappeared into his, and Joseph busied himself with opening the door to the one that he and Belle would be sharing, letting the two lovers have their moment before they were parted for the night. They’d decided that with the sword coming back into the picture, however fragmented it might be, it would not be a good idea to leave Belle alone, especially in a strange place, and both Gold and Joseph knew that Belle wouldn’t sleep if she was alone anyway. Given what had happened the last time Gold and Belle had shared a bed, it had been unanimously decided that Belle and Joseph would share in the inn.

“You take the bathroom first,” he said as they entered. “I want to take a shower to get the grave off me.”

Belle smiled, grabbing her overnight bag and heading into the tiny en suite. “I can definitely understand that. You’ve got more mettle than I have, that’s for sure.”

She closed the door and Joseph heard water running and the sound of teeth being brushed, and he looked over at the bed that they would be sharing.

“We’re both sensible adults, I think that we can share a bed,” Belle had said when he’d protested earlier. He supposed that it might be his Catholic sensibilities coming to the fore once more, but really, when it came down to it, he was going to have to admit that it was more to do with the fact that he was falling for Belle, had been for a while even before he’d come over to America and met her in person, and the undeniable fact remained that she was already in a relationship, with someone whom he considered a good friend, no less.

He sat down on the end of the bed, trying to process everything that was going on. His first and only priority should be the case and helping Belle to get rid of the thing that was possessing her and causing her and Gold so much misery. His own feelings didn’t come into it. At first he had been able to convince himself that his feelings were simple concern for her wellbeing, understandable considering the vast stress and fear that she had been under for all her life and that was coming to an explosive head now.

But now he had actually met her and had been by her side throughout some of these terrifying experiences, he had to admit that what he was feeling went a little bit further than simple concern, and now he was going to be spending the night with her in the interest of damage limitation. All he had to do was make sure that he didn’t accidentally cause any damage himself.

The bathroom door opened and Belle came out in her pyjamas.

“All yours,” she said. There was a moment of awkwardness then, Belle standing in the bathroom doorway and Joseph sitting on the bed, a moment of intimacy that wasn’t quite right. Then something jolted them back into action, and Joseph locked the bathroom door behind him, leaning back against it and asking God for help to get through a situation that had as yet in his life been unknown to him.

The shower water was lukewarm and the pressure was terrible, but it was clean, and that was all that mattered. As he washed himself, Joseph glared down at his limp cock.

“You’d better stay like that,” he grumbled.

Belle was in bed when he returned to the room in his pyjamas, curled up on her side with the covers pulled up to her chin.

“Good night, Joseph,” she said. The tiredness in her voice was evident; her naps throughout the drive hadn’t been enough.

Joseph turned out the light and got into bed beside her, lying with his back to her in the hope that would make everything easier.

X

Joseph woke suddenly, the memory of a sharp sound ringing in his ears, and he immediately turned over to check that Belle was all right. She was sitting up staring at the ceiling, and it was clear from her heaving chest and the faint sheen of perspiration on her skin that she’d woken just as suddenly, and probably from a less than pleasant dream.

She glanced over on hearing his movement and gave a wan smile, running her hands through her hair.

“Sorry I woke you.”

“It’s all right. It’s not as if I wasn’t forewarned.”

Joseph readjusted his position against the pillows, propping himself up on one elbow so as to be able to talk to her. “What was it this time?” he asked.

Belle shook her head. “It was different this time. I was still in the same place, still holding the dagger, just like all the dreams have been like recently. But this time Gold was there too. There’s never been anyone else before, it’s only ever been me and the entity.”

“What happened?” Joseph pressed. “Did Gold do anything? Say anything?”

Belle shook her head. “No, he was just standing there. I think he looked as surprised to be there as I was to find him there. I just felt this horrible sense of fear that I was going to hurt him. I was holding this bloody knife and he was just standing there, and I was petrified with fear that something was going to happen to him. It was like in a horror movie, when you’re willing the heroine not to stop and turn around because she’s going to come face to face with the monster. Just keep running, don’t look back. Never look back.”

“Did you say anything to him?” Joseph was never really a great one for interpreting the meaning of dreams, but since they’d established that it was likely that Belle’s recurring dream was a simulation of how the entity had been released into the world in the first place, they might be able to pick up some tips.

“I don’t think so. I can’t really remember. I might have done, but I don’t know what it was.”

Joseph left it at that, he didn’t want to get too intense considering that it was the middle of the night and Belle was obviously on edge as a result of her dream. He reached out, taking one of her hands in his.

“It’ll be all right,” he said. “We’ll get through this. I’ll stay up with you till you go back to sleep.”

Belle snorted. “You might have a bit of a long wait.”

She lay back down, staring up at the ceiling, playing with her fingers agitatedly. Joseph didn’t want to push her to talk if she didn’t want to, but at the same time, he thought that it might help her calm her fears if she talked them through with someone. Then again, she’d probably done more than enough talking with more than enough people over the years for her already to have had a lifetime’s worth of it. That was one of the problems with coming into the case so comparatively late, despite having been involved in a consulting capacity since the beginning. He had spent so long talking to Belle over Skype and listening to her fears and her dreams from the other side of the ocean, but now that he was here beside her, with only a few inches between them instead of several miles, he had no idea what to say.

He was saved from saying anything by a series of disturbing noises from the room next door. A garbled shout was quickly cut off, and then there was a tumbling thump that sounded distinctly like someone falling out of bed.

Belle and Joseph looked at each other, both completely alert, the last vestiges of sleep immediately gone from their minds, and Joseph slipped out of bed, creeping over to the wall on light feet and tapping gently.

“Gold?” he hissed. “Are you all right?”

He didn’t receive any response, and fear began to coat the back of his tongue. “Gold? Is everything ok? Don’t make me bust the door down in there.”

He could hear the sounds of movement in the room but that didn’t necessarily mean anything positive. For a moment, he was entertaining visions of the guardians of the graveyard having got wind of their earlier break-in and now coming to reclaim what they’d taken. He shivered and moved away to the door, peering out into the corridor before tiptoeing the few steps to Gold’s door and knocking sharply.

To his immense relief, Gold answered. He was looking very rumpled and the bed beyond was a complete tangle of sheets, but he was all in one piece and was fully conscious.

“Sorry,” he said, his voice tight with acute embarrassment. “Just a bad dream. And then I fell out of bed.”

Joseph looked at him sympathetically.

“Well, you’re not the only one suffering from nightmares tonight.” He indicated his and Belle’s room. “Do you want to come in and discuss it? We’re awake anyway.”

Gold seemed to be in two minds, but then grabbed his room key and followed Joseph back into their room. It was a small room, the bed being the main feature, but none of them were particularly large people and all three of them could sit comfortably on the bed.

“It was strange,” Gold said. “It’s not the first nightmare I’ve had since I started on this case but it’s the first one that I can really remember. You were there,” he said to Belle. “We were outside somewhere, there were standing stones. I thought I recognised them but it was too dark to say for certain. You were there and you were holding the dagger, stained with blood.” He shrugged. “Maybe I’ve just been thinking about your own nightmares so much that they’ve turned into my own.”

Belle shook her head. She was looking very pale. “No, I don’t think that’s it. I had exactly the same dream, and it was strange because you were in it.”

Gold’s eyes darted across to the partition wall that separated the two bedrooms.

“I think it’s the blade,” he muttered. “Having it in such close proximity isn’t healthy.”

Joseph wondered. There was probably something in Gold’s hypothesis, especially if the blade was the self-same blade that Belle and Gold were seeing in their nightmares. It stood to reason that if it was powerful enough to bind the entity, then it would have terrific power of its own right.

Belle gave a soft laugh. “And to think that we specifically organised things to avoid having me and you in the same room tonight.”

There was no discussion involved, they had just come to the independent and mutual discussion that Gold would remain in their room with them for the rest of the night, and as the adrenaline began to wear off, so the three of them found themselves tucked in under the covers. Joseph found that lying between the two lovers wasn’t quite as strange an experience as it ordinarily would have been, and he put that down to sheer exhaustion. No-one could really be awkward when it came down to a matter of necessity.

X

Morning brought with it freshness of mind and clarity, and Joseph being very disorientated and rather warm from sharing a bed with not one but two other people, one of whom was curled around him. Trying to shift Belle’s hold on him without waking her, he began to panic. Had she thought that he was Gold? He glanced over his shoulder, Gold was lying on his stomach and facing away from them, apparently dead to the world, so at least that was one less thing to worry about. Now all he had to do was extricate himself from Belle’s grip and leave the two of them alone to wake up together.

There was also the comparatively small, but to Joseph incredibly panic-inducing, problem that Belle’s pyjama camisole had slipped during the night and now her breasts were bare and pressed against his chest.

She stirred as he was trying to unlatch her arms without looking at her décolletage, and opened her eyes.

“Good morning,” she mumbled sleepily. “I guess I really do sleep better when there’s someone else in bed.”

“Morning,” Joseph squeaked. “You, erm, your…”

He glanced down, and Belle followed his gaze, pulling away from him and giving him a brief glimpse of pert breasts and rosy pink nipples before she pulled her top back up.

“Woops. It happens.” She didn’t seem at all discomfited by her exposure and just gave a still half-asleep smile as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Joseph took advantage of her wakefulness to clamber out of bed and escape from the huddle before anything else embarrassing could happen, like his manhood threatening to betray him.

“Thank you, Joseph,” Belle said. “It means a lot to know that you and Gold are both there for me like this.”

Joseph disappeared into the bathroom as she reached across to wake Gold, and he splashed cold water into his face, looking at himself in the mirror and wishing that he knew what to make of what had happened during the night. Nothing much, really, when it came down to it, but it felt like something much more fundamental had just occurred.

He shook the thought out of his head. They had to focus on the entity. They had one piece of the blade and then needed to find the rest.

His feelings could wait until Belle and Gold were no longer in danger.


	38. Chapter 38

“I think there are three pieces,” Joseph said.

He and Gold were sitting at Gold’s kitchen table, staring at the blade fragment that was sitting looking suspiciously innocent on the table between them. Gold had cleaned all the dirt and decay off it and now it was looking rather shinier and a hell of a lot sharper than it had done before. Gold couldn’t decide if that made it seem more or less benign than it had done when it had been covered in grave muck.

He nodded slowly.

“Yes, I think you’re right. This piece is too small to be part of a sword that was split in half, even if it was a comparatively short sword. The other half would have to be very long, and not easily concealed.”

“It’s not just that.” Joseph drained his coffee. Gold wondered how much of the stuff he had been drinking recently; ever since they came back from their road trip to find Malcolm and the first piece of the blade, he had been working at all hours and imbibing more caffeine than was probably healthy. Well, at least it wasn’t whisky, that was all Gold could say. Paranormal investigation was probably not a career recommended to semi-recovering alcoholics and Gold would not have blamed Joseph at all if he’d found his booze stash severely depleted after this visit. All the same, giving him something to focus on seemed to have done him good, in spite of the various scares and setbacks that had happened since he had come over to Maine. If only they could keep this streak going, and get through to the end of the investigation and a satisfactory conclusion with the minimum of disruption. Somehow, Gold didn’t think that was going to be possible.

Joseph had been tense ever since they left New York, and Gold wondered just how the strange and disturbed night had affected him on top of his jetlag and the sleepless night he’d spent watching over Belle before that. The poor man probably just needed a good night’s sleep and he’d be right as rain, but like the rest of them, he seemed unwilling to take a nap for fear of what might happen whilst he was out of it.

Gold decided not to mention it and instead focussed on the details of the case that were spread out over the table, surrounding the piece of the blade. They could deal with anything else later.

“The entity said that the aunts had betrayed the bloodline,” Joseph said presently, picking up his notes on Gold’s face-to-face conversation with the Dark One.

Gold nodded. “Something along those lines, yes.”

“That implies that they did something specific that would hinder the entity when it came to try and pass on to you.”

Things were beginning to make sense in Gold’s mind. His aunts had done all they could to protect him. They had warded the house against the shadow, and they had kept the location of the first piece of the sword. Why would they then not keep the locations of the other pieces? They either didn’t know, as was probably the case with the piece that was left in Scotland, or they had hidden it themselves and didn’t need to make a note of the location as the implication was that they would always know.

Or maybe not knowing was the point?

He shook his head, trying to get the jumbled thoughts into some kind of order.

“I think we have to look into what it meant by betraying the bloodline,” Joseph continued. He was doodling on one of his pages, reproducing the spiky pattern that was carved into the blade fragment. They could see it more clearly now that it was clean, but there was still no indication as to what the engraving actually meant.

“Substitute bloodline for family,” Gold suggested. “The aunts betrayed the family. What does that usually mean, in contexts other than thousand year old blood curses and malevolent entities from beyond the dawn of time?”

“Well, betraying family secrets would usually mean telling them to someone outside of the family. Telling them to rivals.”

“I don’t think we’re looking for a rival in this case, per se,” Gold muttered. “To the entity, everything’s a rival.”

“Someone outside the family then. The aunts must have had someone they trusted to hide a piece of the sword for them. That way, if something happened and the entity managed to get its hands on the other parts of the blade, there would be one part whose location was unknown to the rest of the bloodline because they hadn’t buried it.”

Gold shuddered. “Can we please hope that the other parts are not secreted in cemeteries? I’ve had enough grave robbery to last anyone a lifetime, thank you very much.”

“Well, buried in the metaphorical sense then.” Joseph paused, rearranging the papers on the table. “I guess the question remains as to who your aunts would trust enough to pass on something so potentially dangerous to, and who would trust them enough to accept such a commission knowing that the entity might come after them at some point in the future looking for it.”

Gold sat back in his chair, blowing out a long breath. Who would they trust enough? His aunts had always been private people and had never really had any interaction with anyone outside of their coven. He glanced back down to the journals that had proven so instrumental in finding the first piece of the blade, and a horrible twisting feeling began to make itself known in the pit of his stomach.

“Madeleine De Ville,” he said eventually. “She was always the one that the aunts were closest to, and she knew Malcolm for the brief time that he was here. I knew her daughter growing up.”

He paused and gave a little snort of laughter. “Funny. Ella was the one who first gave Belle and me hope that the entity could be defeated, and it was whilst we were staying at her house that the shadow came back for the first time since my childhood.”

The more he thought about it, the more things began to make horrible sense.

“That was probably the first time that Belle had fought against the entity hard enough to push it out into the shadow form,” he said. “We know she’s done it again since then, you’ve seen it for yourself, but something must have happened whilst we were at Ella’s that triggered that response and made her fight that bit harder. Something must have happened to awaken the entity to a new level of consciousness that Belle subconsciously needed to fight against.”

“Perhaps it was the nearness of the blade,” Joseph suggested. “I mean, we both saw first-hand what happened in New York. Neither of you were able to sleep properly with it in such close proximity.”

“Yes. I wasn’t affected at Ella’s though.”

“You likely weren’t in the same room as it,” Joseph pointed out. “Belle will always be more sensitive because she’s hosting the entity.”

Things were definitely falling into place. The worst part about it was that Ella probably didn’t have a clue that she was safeguarding part of a dangerous artefact that had kept a dangerous entity at bay for several years. Gold scrubbed his hands over his face with a sigh. Idly he reflected that he really needed a shave. Grooming had gone slightly out of the window in their haste to get back to Storybrooke and regroup as soon as possible.

“That’s going to be an interesting conversation,” he muttered. “By the way, Ella, you know how I asked you to dig out your mother’s diaries to find any mention of my father? Were there any mentions of my aunts asking Maddie to guard a relic with her life?”

“Maybe she already knows and she just doesn’t realise what it is,” Joseph suggested. “You never know, her mother might have had it made into a letter opener and it’s just sitting there in plain sight.”

Gold snorted. “From what I remember of Maddie, that doesn’t seem too far-fetched an idea.” He paused, wondering what Ella would say when he apprised her of the latest developments in the case. He could already see her shaking her head in despair. She had warned him to be careful, and now things were spiralling on quickly in a direction that they could not help but follow in the hope of some good coming out of it in the end.

“I don’t think that we should tell Belle about this,” Joseph said. “I know that this concerns her and that this is her case, but with everything as volatile as it is at the moment, I think we need to keep whatever advantage over the entity that we might have.”

Gold nodded. “I understand, but how is this an advantage over the entity?”

“I don’t think it knows where the second part of the blade is, and I don’t think that we should tell it. When it was speaking to you that night, it told you in pretty much as many words that Malcolm had taken the blade to his grave. It told you that the aunts had betrayed the bloodline, but it didn’t tell you where or how. We’re working on a hypothesis that it reacted to the blade’s presence in Ella’s home, but we don’t know for certain, and I don’t want to tempt fate. If we can keep it from Belle then we might have something we can use against it.” He shrugged. “I might be wrong, it might already know all of this, but I don’t think we should take that risk.”

“You’re right.” Gold sighed. He really didn’t want to be keeping any of the details of Belle’s case from her, but with every new thing that they uncovered, the likelihood of the entity using it against them would increase, and thus the risk to Belle herself increased. The entire reason that they were doing this was to free Belle from the Dark One and they couldn’t do that if it got too much wind of their plans and decided to keep Belle as a hostage to ensure their co-operation. Gold knew from experience that it didn’t really have all that much respect for Belle’s body and he doubted that it would have any qualms about injuring her in pursuit of its goal.

“I’ll call Ella and arrange a day for us to go down and speak to her.” He paused. “I wouldn’t want it to be more than a day trip, although it would be a long day. With everything that’s going on, I don’t want to leave Belle alone overnight here in Storybrooke whilst we’re in a different state. We already know that the entity will pursue me, and if it thinks that I’m running away for whatever reason then it might make Belle follow anyway, and then things would be even worse. I know that she can’t come with us in order to try and keep it secret, but we need to minimise any fallout as much as we can. Especially if the Dark One decides that it’s going to rebel against what we’re trying to do.”

“I’m not sure whether it would,” Joseph said. “We really ought to keep the details from Belle because we can’t predict how it would react, but at the same time, I think that it wouldn’t interfere too much. We are ultimately both looking towards the same ends - it wants the blade to be restored as much as we do, so whilst we’re looking for the pieces and bringing them together, I don’t think that it would impede us. The trouble comes when the blade is brought together completely again, because we want to use it to destroy the entity altogether and banish it, and it wants to use it for getting back into your bloodline.”

Gold nodded. “Even if it doesn’t stop us from collecting the pieces, it might well try to take them for itself, and that could get messy.”

He got up from the kitchen table, grabbing his phone and leaving the room in order to call Ella.

_“Well, hello there Rum. It’s been a few weeks; I’ve been wondering how you’re all getting on. Are any of my predictions coming true?”_

“To be brutally honest, Ella, I haven’t been paying any attention. We’ve got slightly bigger things to worry about.”

There was silence on the other end of the line.

_“I did warn you to be careful, Rum.”_

Even though he hadn’t said anything about what had actually happened, Gold got the distinct impression that Ella could read his mind over the phone lines and new the intimate details of everything.

“Listen, Joseph and I have made a breakthrough and we need to consult Maddie’s diaries again. Did she ever say anything about my aunts giving her something to safeguard?”

_“I can’t remember anything off the top of my head, but I can go through her books again. When it came to things as important as that, she wouldn’t have told me. She was the world’s best gossip, but when it came to her sisterhood, her word was always good. She could keep a secret.”_ There was a pause. _“What is it that I’m looking for?”_

“You’ll know it if you see it,” Gold said grimly. “We’ll explain everything in person if you’re willing to receive us.”

_“Of course, I’m not doing anything this weekend. Should I expect three of you?”_

“No. Belle won’t be coming. We thought it would be safer that way.”

_“Good to know that you do take my advice sometimes. I shall see you on Saturday then. I must say, I am rather intrigued to meet your former priest.”_

“Ella, behave yourself.”

_“Darling, I will be a paragon. Give my love to Belle, and let her know that her cards are staying stable. The future is unchanged.”_

They said their goodbyes and Gold rang off. In a way it gave him hope, although he had never really believed in Ella’s Tarot. If Belle’s future was unchanged, then it meant that what they were doing was taking them in the right direction, and there was still hope that Belle would be free of the entity very soon.


	39. Chapter 39

As they cruised down the highway towards Boston and Ella’s home, Gold reflected that they were doing quite a lot of road trips lately, and he hoped that this wouldn’t be the start of a trend. It wouldn’t be the first time that he’d spent weeks racing all around in the country in search of answers, but time was of the essence in this case, and the more driving he did, the less he was solving.

“At least we don’t have to worry about sleeping arrangements this time,” he mused aloud.

“Yes.”

Gold looked sideways at Joseph briefly before refocussing his attention on the road in front of him.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “You’ve been unusually tense ever since we came back from New York and whilst I can quite see why, all things considered, it seems rather sudden.”

Joseph let out a long sigh.

“That night in New York,” he began. “Belle and I ended up… rather close in our sleep.”

Gold bit back a laugh.

“Joseph, there were three of us in a comparatively small double bed, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if I’d woken up spooning you.”

“I saw her breasts.”

The sentence was spoken very quickly, the words all falling over themselves in their haste to get out.

“I didn’t mean to. It was sort of unavoidable. She seemed fine about it, I just…”

“Joseph.”

“…after all, she’s your girlfriend…”

“Joseph.”

Joseph finally trailed off.

“It was a weird night,” Gold said. “Let’s just agree that what happened, happened, and not let a weird night make things weird between the three of us.”

Joseph nodded. “Yes. Good call. We’ll talk no more about it.”

They continued on in companionable silence for a while, and Gold was pleased to see that a little of the tension had gone from Joseph’s posture. If accidentally seeing Belle’s breasts having cuddled up to her during the night whilst they were all sharing a bed was the height of his worries, then hopefully everything else would be plain sailing.

Joseph’s phone began to ring, and he answered it.

“Hi Belle. Hold on, I’ll put you on speaker so that you can talk to Gold too.”

_“Hi guys. I just wanted to wish you well on your journey.”_

“We’ll be back before you know it,” Gold assured her. “We’ll be back tonight.”

_“I know. I probably won’t sleep till you let me know you’re back in Storybrooke.”_

“I know.” Gold paused. “I wish you were coming with us.”

_“So do I, but I know it’s not a good idea. Any edge that we can get over this thing is a good edge. I’ll see you both when you get back. Drive safely.”_

“I always drive safely.”

_“We nearly ended up in a ditch on the way to Malcolm’s grave,”_  Belle pointed out.

“I maintain that was because the road was poorly maintained,” Gold said, choosing to ignore Joseph laughing his head off in the passenger seat.

_“Well, at any rate, take care of yourselves.”_

“We will. Take care of yourself too, Belle. See you soon.”

They said their goodbyes and hung up, and once Joseph’s laughter had died down, Gold risked another glance at him. There was something incomprehensible in his expression, but Joseph had never been a very easy man to read, especially not when travelling at several miles an hour, and Gold decided that if there was something to pursue in that particular line of inquiry, he would do it when he was not in control of a moving vehicle. No more close encounters with ditches today.

X

Ella was waiting for them in the open doorway when they arrived, and Gold couldn’t tell if that was because she was eager to meet Joseph, eager to tell them the good news that she’d found the blade - although, he reflected, they hadn’t actually told her precisely what they were looking for - or wanting to give them bad news as soon as possible.

As soon as they got out of the car, it was clear that it was the first option.

“Welcome to Chez de Ville,” she said, coming over and embracing Joseph. “Gold, you really shouldn’t have hidden this handsome fellow away across the pond for so long. I’ve been missing out. Why did you never bring him to see me when you were working together?”

“Because at the time he was a priest and may well have had a heart attack,” Gold said cheerfully, accepting Ella’s hug with good grace. “In fact, I’m not sure you won’t still give him one now.”

Joseph was looking like a deer caught in the headlights, and Ella just laughed.

“My bark is worse than my bite, dear. Shall we go inside and get started? I honestly don’t know how much I’ll be able to help you, but I would hate to think that you’ve had a wasted trip.”

They went into the house and Ella showed them through to the living room, where a large pile of old notebooks was piled up, post-it notes sticking out of them in various places. It was gratifying to know that Ella was taking the case and her subsequent research seriously.

Once they were all settled with drinks and snacks, their hostess began her piece.

“When it comes to the sisterhood, Mother’s surprisingly reticent in her writings,” Ella said, grabbing the topmost book from the pile and opening it to an orange post-it. “She makes notes on spells and rituals that they performed, and there are a few things about the personal lives of the members, including her observations on Malcolm’s missing piece of soul. But when it comes to secret transactions, there’s very little. Like I said, she’s good to her sisters. I couldn’t find anything in her diaries about receiving any packages to protect from your aunties.”

Gold’s heart sank. Perhaps his hunch had been too good to be true after all.

“I did, however, find a very interesting little hint that something was locked away in the heart of the old house,” Ella continued. “It’s all very cryptic and naturally, Mother knew it all in her head so there wasn’t a lot of need to write down most of it, but there are some clues.”

Gold raised an eyebrow. “That’s great, Ella, but you don’t live in your mother’s old house anymore.”

“I do not, but I still have its heart.” Ella nodded over to the hallway and the grandfather clock there. The clock did not work; it was a charming period piece but nothing more.

“It’s been in the family for generations, passed on from de Ville to de Ville and now it lives with me. Mother always used to call it the heart of the house, and we’ve always kept it in the very centre of the place where the most energy would be.”

“Right,” Gold said. “You know, I always did think that there was something strange about your family, but then I look at my own and realise that I probably can’t talk.”

“You’ve got a centuries old evil entity haunting your bloodline. My mother’s little foibles concerning stopped grandfather clocks are nothing compared to that,” Ella declared. “But I digress. To get back to the matter at hand - the heart of the house is the only place where I can find any mention of things being hidden.”

“It makes sense,” Joseph said. “The clock is handed down from de Ville to de Ville - it’s handed down a bloodline. The entity said that the Gold bloodline had been betrayed. Where better to hide something that’s bound to one bloodline than in something that’s metaphorically bound to another?”

Ella just looked at him as if he was speaking gibberish, but Gold was beginning to see the puzzle pieces slotting into place. Malcolm had broken the sword into pieces and hidden them in places he would know where to find them. One at the house back in Scotland, one kept with him, and one with the aunts. But then the aunts had passed their piece on to a completely different bloodline for safekeeping, betraying the entity.

“So have you taken a look inside the clock?” Gold asked.

“No,” Ella said. “I thought that I ought to wait till you were here just in case something incredibly supernatural jumped out and bit me. And I only found the key yesterday. It was stuffed in the middle of all Mother’s papers; I thought I was going to have to break out the hairpins to get inside it.”

Joseph looked at her with a confused expression. “If it’s the heart of the house where things are hidden and protected and it’s passed down the generations, why wouldn’t the key be passed on too?”

“Possibly because Mother’s safeguarding an evil spirit in there,” Ella said flippantly.

“It’s not an evil spirit,” Gold said, his voice weary. “It’s just part of an artefact. The broken piece in itself holds no real power.”

Well, that wasn’t strictly true, as they had found out when they had dug up the first part of the blade, but since the blade would likely have no effect upon Ella, just as it had no effect upon Joseph, then there was no need to worry her with the tales of what had happened that night in New York.

Ella produced a small key from her pocket with a flourish.

“If everyone’s suitably refreshed, shall we?”

They followed her out into the hallway, and Ella slipped the key into the clock’s lock.

“It hasn’t been opened in years,” she said, jiggling it about a bit when it refused to budge. “Probably not since I was a girl.” She paused. “The thing is, if there was something loose in there rattling around, I’m sure I would have heard it when I was moving; I’ve lived with it in several places since I moved out of Mother’s.”

“We’ll just have to see what’s inside,” Gold said. He could feel his pulse increasing at the thought of uncovering something, but he didn’t know whether it was through fear or excitement. It probably wasn’t the latter.

Finally there was an unusually heavy clunk and the door gave way, opening a fraction of an inch with a creak. Carefully, Ella prised the door open further and further until they could see inside the pendulum chamber.

Gold’s heart sank to his boots faster than if it had been made of lead. The chamber was empty. Nothing inside but the unmoving pendulums.

“Oh,” Ella said, sitting back on her heels. “I was so certain that we were going to find something in there. I was all ready for a big reveal and to see something marvellous.”

“Back to square one, I guess,” Gold said. “Just when I could see how it was all pieced together. Maybe it’s still here, but somewhere else.”

“Wait.” Joseph came closer and touched the largest pendulum. “There’s something not right about this.”

The pendulum did not swing. He pushed it again a little harder, but it still remained locked in place.

“Have you got a torch?”

Ella scrambled to her feet and raced away, returning half a minute later with a powerful torch which she handed to Joseph.

“We prefer candles; tarot readings really aren’t the same with a Maglite on the table but sometimes needs must when you’re pushed for time.”

Gold just rolled his eyes, but he knew that Ella’s quips masked a definite fear of what they were going to find inside her family heirloom.

Joseph shone the torch up inside the clock’s workings, and he smiled.

“Your mother’s a genius,” he said.

“I’ve heard my mother called a lot of things, but genius is not one of them,” Ella said. “What’s she done?”

Joseph got out of the way and handed the torch to Gold, who looked up into the clock as well.

At the top of the pendulum, attached with what looked like an entire roll of wire, was a very familiar shard of wavy steel, etched with geometric markings.

“Ella, I’m afraid I’m going to have to take your family heirloom apart,” Gold said. “But on the upside, the clock will probably work again once we’re finished with it.”

Since none of them were clockmakers it took a while for them to open the clock up fully and get at the part they needed, but finally they were all sitting on the hall floor looking at the shard of the sword.

“Is that it?” Ella asked.

“Believe me, it’s a lot more impressive than you think,” Joseph said darkly. “Gold, I can read the markings now. There’s a word there.”

“Where?”

Joseph pointed out the letters.  _NIMUE._

Gold looked up at him.

“I think we’ve definitely got the right sword.”


	40. Chapter 40

“So, what happens now?”

It was very late, but despite the long day and the tiring drive, neither Joseph nor Gold felt any desire to go to bed. They had called Belle to let her know that they were back safely, so she could sleep if she wanted to, but they both knew that in her apartment above the library, she would be just as awake as they were.

They were back in the kitchen of Gold’s home, the two pieces of the sword laid out on the table in front of them. Now that they had the two pieces and could match their broken edges up to each other, it was clear that they were definitely part of the same larger, longer sword, and that once it was complete, the blade would be an impressive and hefty one.

“Now we have to go back to Scotland,” Joseph said. He gathered the pieces of the blade together and wrapped them up in the old table cloth that Gold had been using to keep them hidden. “We think that’s where the final part of the blade must be, and our deductions have all been correct so far.”

Gold nodded. “What happens after we find the final piece?”

“Then the sword must be re-forged,” Joseph said. “There aren’t all that many traditional blacksmiths around these days, but there are some if you know where to look.”

Gold didn’t doubt that Joseph knew where to look. The course of his work had taken him to dark places that required specialist tools, and he would know where to get them forged.

“Are we absolutely sure that the sword needs to be re-forged?” he asked. “Since the sword being broken was what caused this all in the first place and the sword being re-forged is what the entity is ultimately working towards so that it can be reunited with the bloodline? It feels like we’re playing into its hands somewhat here.”

Joseph nodded. “Yes, but it’s a necessary step that we have to take. The sword is what summoned the Dark One in the first place. It’s likely the only thing that will be able to banish it again. Most things of this type are cyclical in nature: summoning and banishing are the same at source, you have to recreate the circumstances. It’s all about portals,” he continued. “You open a portal and you can pull something through it or push it back out again.”

Gold shook his head. “You know, I really preferred our partnership when we were dealing with hacks and fakes rather than stuff that actually existed.” He sighed and drained his teacup. “So, do you think that if we re-forge the sword, you can banish this thing?”

Joseph didn’t respond for a long time.

“I don’t know,” he said eventually. “Before we do anything more I need to go back home and get my research and all my old books.”

“The ones that you accidentally forgot to return to the Vatican library after you left the priesthood?”

“Yes, those ones. They should be able to tell us more about what kind of entity we’re up against, now that we know much more what we’re dealing with. They should be able to tell me how to banish it. Although I don’t know if I’ll be able to banish it myself. I might have to take a step back and let you and Belle do that part. I’ll guide you as much as I can, but ultimately, this is your blood that we’re talking about.”

“Yes.” Gold was not exactly enamoured by that prospect. “That was what I was afraid of. Blood sacrifices are all very well, but they do seem a bit extreme.”

Joseph politely ignored that comment, and Gold knew that he was going to have to get used to the idea. If that was what it took to get the Dark One out of Belle and back from whence it came, then so be it. Blood could be replaced in the long run.

Just as long as it wasn’t too much blood.

“I think it would be best if I took the blade with me,” Joseph continued. “Its presence shouldn’t have any effect on me because I’m not the same blood type as you and Belle. Ella’s lived with a piece of it in her house for almost her entire life without ill effects, so I should be fine.”

Gold nodded his agreement. He really didn’t want to think about what might happen on a long-haul flight with him and Belle if the Dark One decided to put in another appearance.

“I’ll go on ahead and I’ll take the blade with me. I can go home and get the resources I need, and then I’ll head up to Scotland to get the final piece of the sword and get it re-forged. Once that happens, we’ll have to move quickly. Once the sword is complete, the entity will be able to move freely again, but it will likely have to be the presence of the sword to do so. Likewise, the entity and the sword will need to be in the same place if we stand any chance of banishing it.”

“So, it could go one of three ways. We succeed, we fail miserably when the thing transfers back into my bloodline, or we fail even more miserably when nothing happens.”

“That about sums it up, yes,” Joseph said.

“No pressure then.”

It was definitely a dire situation that they were heading towards, but there wasn’t a lot else that could be done. They had to get the entity out of Belle before something terrible happened. There was definitely a lot to be said for letting sleeping dogs lie, but now that they’d opened this can of worms, they couldn’t take it back, and they couldn’t leave Belle in her hopeless state.

“When will you leave?” Gold asked.

“Well, it’s probably best to get it all over with sooner rather than later,” Joseph said. “The longer that we hang around here with two pieces of the blade, the more active the entity is going to get and the less sleep you and Belle are going to have as a result. Not that your nightmares haven’t been incredibly useful in telling us facts about the entity and how it was summoned, but we can’t go on with it affecting your quality of life like this. I’ll go tomorrow; as soon as I can.” He paused. “I think I’ve encroached on you and Belle enough.”

The phrasing caught Gold as odd, and he found himself thinking back to the moment in the car on the way to Ella’s, and Joseph’s awkward confession to ending up rather intimately entwined with Belle during the night. Joseph wasn’t a priest anymore, and he’d never been immune to normal spectrum of human romantic attraction even when he had been bound by vows.

“I know that you and Belle have got close over the last few weeks,” Gold said, although he wasn’t quite sure in his head what he was leading up to with the conversation. The thoughts in his head weren’t yet put into words. “I know she talks to you about the things that she can’t or doesn’t want to talk to me about.”

Joseph nodded. “There’s nothing untoward going on, Gold, I can assure you.”

Gold shook his head. “No, that’s not what I’m worried about, I trust you both. Honestly, when we’re all three of us as entwined in this thing as we are, and you’re possibly going to perform an exorcism on her, you need that closeness.”

Joseph didn’t meet his eyes, just staring out of the kitchen window at the darkened garden.

“She’s a very lovely woman, and you’re very lucky to have her, no matter what might be going on with the Dark One inside her mind.”

With those few words, and the quiet acceptance in Joseph’s voice, Gold put two and two together and realised that his hunch was probably correct. Joseph was attracted to Belle, just as he himself had been when they had first met.

It was definitely something to think about. Gold had never been in this position before and he couldn’t think of anyone he knew who had. It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing that could be dropped into conversation and he wasn’t sure that there were any Internet self-help sites for people who realised that their friends were into their girlfriends and didn’t quite know what to do with the knowledge. He trusted Joseph and Belle both; he would not have said so if he didn’t and he probably wouldn’t be sitting here overthinking the entire situation if he had any doubts.

The problem was that he really didn’t know how Belle saw the entire situation. Probably because he had never asked her. He knew that she and Joseph were close, he knew that from their conversations and the ease with which she’d acted around him when they first met in person. Of all of them, she had been the most comfortable with the closeness that the three of them had shared that night in the inn in New York.

All the same, he didn’t know if that was just a close friendship based on the very deep and intimate feelings that she had shared with him when she unburdened herself on their long-distance calls, or whether those feelings went deeper, to a sense of mutual attraction.

In another world, where there was no entity, or at least a world where the entity had not come between him and Belle in such dramatic fashion as it had done that first night they’d made love, this wouldn’t even be a situation. Joseph would never have come into the equation at all, but now he had, and it was making things more complicated than ever.

Considering what had happened the last time Gold and Belle had been intimate, he couldn’t really say that he would blame her for keeping her distance from him and seeking solace from Joseph instead. Surprisingly, the thought didn’t cause him as much pain as he thought it might.

The only thing that he could really do now was wait. There was no use in trying to work out what on earth was going on or what on earth was going to happen next when this time next week, his and Belle’s very existence might be on the line. Belle had certainly been keeping her distance since that fateful night, and Gold thought that it would be best if they simply left the conversations until after the entity had been defeated.

Until then, there were far too many variables to try and consider, and far too many things clouding their judgement. If they managed to defeat the entity, then Belle would be free to make up her own mind concerning her feelings, without the fear of the entity getting in the way or somehow influencing things. The Dark One had said it had not had anything to do with Belle’s feelings and had not coerced her into her relationship with Gold in any way, but Gold wanted to be absolutely sure before he started planning any future in which the two of them were together. The choice about Belle’s future would be hers and hers alone.

All the same… The future was a tricky topic at the moment. As much as he wanted to believe that everything would be all right and they would manage to banish the Dark One, Gold couldn’t help the ominous feeling that his days were numbered.

“Joseph,” he began, aware that he was probably going about this the wrong way, but if Joseph was leaving the next day then they probably wouldn’t meet in person again until the sword had been re-forged, and by that point, everything would be going to hell in a fast car, by which time it would be too late and far too inappropriate.

“Yes?”

“If we do this, and if anything goes wrong…”

You have my permission to date Belle if this thing kills me? No, that was definitely the wrong way of wording it.

Joseph was looking at him with tired and rather sleep-deprived eyes, waiting for him to finish, but Gold had no idea how to end the sentence and he trailed off.

“Just make sure Belle’s ok, please. And make sure she knows that whatever happens, it wasn’t her fault.”

Joseph nodded his understanding.

“You have my word.”

He didn’t try to tell Gold that it was all going to be all right, there wasn’t anything to worry about, nothing was going to go wrong. It was the same frankness from him that Belle appreciated. Optimism had never been one of Joseph’s strong points, and he knew the odds at stake here just as well as the rest of them did. There was no way of sugar-coating what might happen, and what had a one-in-three chance of happening.

Joseph got up from the table. “I’d probably better get to bed if I’m going to be good for getting home tomorrow.” He paused. “I’d like to say goodbye to Belle before I leave, if that’s all right.”

Gold nodded. “Of course.”

It hadn’t been spoken out loud, but it was clear that Joseph knew that Gold now knew about his feelings towards Belle, and things were already starting to be slightly awkward. Even though he had resolved not to think about it until after it was all over, Gold thought that there couldn’t be any harm in getting Belle’s perspective on the situation right now. It might help him to make some sense of it all. The last thing that he wanted was to lose either his friendship with Joseph or his relationship with Belle as a result of this.


	41. Chapter 41

Joseph was unaccountably nervous as he stood on Belle’s doorstep, waiting for her to answer his timid knock. Although it had not been said out loud, it was clear to both him and Gold that Gold was now aware of his feelings for Belle, and although it had made things slightly awkward, the fact that they had decided by mutual and silent consent not to talk about it did make life a little easier.

This was the first time that he would be seeing Belle after coming to that realisation with Gold, and it would be the last time that he would see her for a couple of weeks whilst he was back in Scotland hunting down the final part of the blade.

The door opened and Belle poked her head around it. She was looking tired, her hair limp around a face free from make-up but still beautiful nonetheless. The dark circles under her eyes seemed to be a permanent feature now, giving her the haunted look of one who had seen too much, and Joseph hoped that soon, they would be a thing of the past.

Despite her obvious fatigue, her face broke into a smile when she saw Joseph and she took a step back, opening the door wide to let him into her apartment.

“Hi there, come on in. How did your magical mystery tour go yesterday, were you successful?”

Joseph nodded. “We were. In fact that’s why I’m here, after a fashion.”

Belle led him through into the living room area and indicated for him to take a seat anywhere. “Do you need something from me?”

“No, I was actually coming to say goodbye.”

Belle looked up sharply. “What? Where are you going? Why are you going?”

There was something in her voice when she spoke, a hint of desperation, begging him to stay.

“I need to go back home,” Joseph said. “I feel like we’re very close to a breakthrough now and I need to go and consult all my books and some contacts back in Scotland.” He smiled. “We’re on the right track, Belle. I’m sure that we’re close to finishing this thing once and for all, which is why I need to go back, even though I’ve only just got here.”

Belle nodded. “I guess you’re right,” she said. “It’s just a shame, as it feels like I’m only just getting to know you.” She gave a sharp bark of laughter. “And I was hoping that I might be able to get a bit more sleep with you watching over me.”

Joseph felt a pull of something in his stomach. He wouldn’t say that he had enjoyed watching over Belle per se; a lot of strange things had been going on during those couple of nights and obviously, he couldn’t deny what had ended up happening when they had shared the bed in New York.

“I feel safe with you here,” Belle continued. “I mean, it’s not that I don’t feel safe with Gold, I do, but there’s always that nagging in the back of my mind that the entity is still there and it still wants to get back to Gold and that it might hurt him. I don’t have that same fear with you. I feel like I can trust myself more around you than I can around Gold and…” She tailed off; although it was clear that there was a lot more that she wanted to say, something was telling her that this wasn’t the right time or place. She stared down at the floor, tracing patterns on her knees with her fingertips and pointedly avoiding Joseph’s eyes.

“Belle?” Joseph ventured. He knew that he probably ought to leave well alone, but he had been Belle’s confidant for so long, even before he had come over to America, and it felt wrong not to offer himself in that capacity again.

“I don’t know whether me feeling this way about you is just a reaction to everything that’s going on right now,” Belle said, her shoulders sagging. She still didn’t look up. “I feel like I can’t trust my own feelings right now. This thing that I have with Gold is real, I’m sure of it. I’m certain that this isn’t anything to do with the entity and Gold said as much, that the entity had denied any responsibility in my feelings towards him. Even so, I still feel like I’m second-guessing myself and not really letting myself get properly involved in this relationship for fear of the fall-out. I mean, look what happened the first time we made love. I know that once this Thing’s out of me, there’s hope of me getting back to a normal life and a normal love life, but still...”

There was a long pause then, with much still hanging unsaid in the air between them.

“I’m sure that it will,” Joseph assured her. “Once the entity has been banished – which I am certain it can be – there will be nothing standing between you and Gold.”

“But will there?” Belle finally looked up at him, running a hand through her hair as she tried to gain some clarity in front of her eyes both literally and figuratively. “Because then there’s the fact that I’m getting so close to you, and I have been for a while now, since before Gold and I became properly established. You’ve been there supporting me from across the pond for a long time now, and now you’re here and I’m getting to know you, and getting to like you even more than I did, and you know, we ended up completely tangled up in New York when we were sharing the bed and I really didn’t mind that.” She stopped, and a little smile appeared at the corner of her mouth for a second. “Actually I quite liked it.”

Joseph gave a slow nod. “I did too,” he admitted. “But I would never want to come between you and Gold.”

“I know, and that’s what makes it so difficult because I know that the two of you are friends and I would never want to jeopardise that because apparently my heart can’t make its mind up. With Gold I worry that I’m drawn to him because of the entity, with you I worry that I’m drawn to you because you’re safe, and I know that there’s less chance of me hurting you, however inadvertently. Like I said, I just don’t know whether to trust my feelings or whether I’m getting mixed signals. I like you both, a lot, in different ways but equally genuinely - at least I hope so and that isn’t the entity talking. I just don’t want things to end up complicated between the three of us, and now you’re leaving and it feels like I’ve left it too late to say all these things, but at the same time I haven’t really been able to process them all myself until recently. Until New York, really, when we were all in that bed together and a part of me was thinking ‘you know, I think I could get used to this’.” She threw her hands up in defeat and stood up.

“This is ridiculous," she said. “You came to say goodbye and you probably have a plane to catch and…”

“Belle…” Joseph stood up too, gently taking her shoulders. She was so small, and so defeated, and he just wanted to hold her and tell her that it was going to be all right even though he knew how slim the chances of that were. “Belle, I like you. A lot. And please believe me when I say that I have no idea what I’m doing right now because several years of celibate priesthood doesn’t really leave a lot of room for relationship advice. Right now I’m just on the right side of being an alcoholic mess and it’s you and wanting to help you and be there for you that I have to thank for not being an alcoholic mess at the moment. Things are complicated and I think all three of us know that.”

“You think Gold knows how I feel about you?”

“I’m pretty sure that he knows how I feel about you,” Joseph said. “I don’t know about you.”

“Oh dear.” Belle crumpled back onto the sofa and Joseph sat down beside her. “I just seem to be making everything more complicated. And now you’re going away and we can’t really process any of it.”

“I’m not going away forever,” Joseph said. “You’re making it sound like we’re never going to see each other again. If we’re going to get rid of this thing then you’ll need to come over to Scotland too. I’m just going on ahead to make sure that everything’s ready and get some things done that need to be done.” He didn’t go into too much detail about getting the blade re-forged; after finding the missing piece with Ella, he had decided that it would probably be best to play his cards close to his chest since the blade was now in his sole possession and would remain so until it was time to perform whatever ritual was required to banish the entity.

Belle gave a snort of laughter. “Can you imagine me on a long-haul flight?”

“You must have had to take one to get here from Australia,” Joseph pointed out.

“Yes. I was so wired on caffeine pills to stay awake that I thought the flight attendants were going to kick me out. Luckily I had my dad with me to keep me from jumping out of the plane and attempting to fly along next to it. I was really very, very high.”

Joseph had to laugh at the image of Belle buzzing with caffeine for the entirety of the long flight.

“Well, this time you’ll have Gold with you to keep you from exiting the plane unexpectedly.”

Belle nodded and gave a long sigh. “How are we going to do this, Joseph?  What happens now? I know I should be focussing on the task at hand and the entity and getting it out of me as I know that things will be different once it’s banished, but at the same time, I can’t help wanting to plan ahead. I’ve never been able to do that before; I’ve never had any successful relationships thanks to this Thing and I really don’t want anything to be ruined, whether I intend it or not. I don’t want to have to wait to find out what my feelings really are; I’m so tired of not trusting myself. Deep down I’m sure that this is all genuine but that cynical part of me keeps saying that not everything’s as it seems and it’s all going to come crashing down around my ears.”

“I think that no matter what the circumstances might be, there’s probably some truth in all of it,” Joseph said. He was feeling completely out of his depth, but he knew that with Belle and Gold in the states that they were in and with their relationship in such a delicate place after the scare with the entity, he had to be the strong and sensible one, a role that he was really not used to taking on. “Yes, the entity led you here to Gold, and yes, you have confided in me a lot, but I think that there is an element of something beneath it all that makes you feel the way you do. And I know that my and Gold’s feelings towards you are genuine as well. It’s a complicated situation, and Belle, I have even less idea what I’m doing in it than you are. This is the first time I’ve ever felt like this about anyone and I have no real experience of trying to navigate these feelings. I wish that I could give you some advice but I can’t, because I don’t know how to go about it all myself, let alone advise someone else on how to go about it all.”

It was probably the longest speech about his feelings he had ever given, and although it left him drained, it felt like a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders with the confession of it all. There was a lot of dialogue surrounding the notion of confession within Catholicism, but to Joseph it had always been a spiritual experience, the lessening of a load on his mind. He might not be in a church speaking to a priest right now, but this confession of his feelings to Belle, and the feelings of hopelessness that went with them, still felt like a release, a benediction of sorts.

Belle gave a sad little smile. “I think we must all be as bad as each other.”

“I don’t want to come between you and Gold,” Joseph said firmly.

“I know. I don’t want to come between you and Gold either. I guess that this is something that the three of us are all going to have to sit down and talk about, but we’re not going to get the chance to do that any time soon.”

“We will get there,” Joseph said. “We’re so close. I can’t promise you that it’s all going to go swimmingly and that we’ll all live happily ever after. I can’t give you false hope. But I know that we’re nearly there.”

“And then it will be the moment of reckoning.” Belle sighed, leaning against Joseph. “I just want it all to be over. I want this horrible darkness gone from my life, so that I can really have a life again.”

“I know.”

She looked up at him, her tired eyes so bright and blue and searching, and then sat up a little straighter, brushing her lips tenderly against his cheek, and then just as lightly against his own mouth.

“Just in case,” she whispered. “Just in case everything goes to hell and nothing gets resolved.”

Joseph returned the chaste peck. Just in case. If that was the extent of his relationship with Belle, then he would be satisfied with that.


	42. Chapter 42

Gold was not expecting a knock at the door, and he was expecting Belle to be on his doorstep even less. They’d been keeping a respectful distance from each other ever since the New York trip and he didn’t know whether it was due to awkwardness about what had happened out there or just general carefulness about not letting Belle get too close to the blade.

Now that Joseph had returned to the UK with all of the blade shards in his possession, it seemed safer for them to begin interacting properly again.

“Hey.” He stepped back to let her inside, and Belle gave him a tired smile.

“Hi. If I was canny I’d think up some kind of excuse as to why I came over, like thinking up a plan of action for when we get over to Scotland and everything starts getting real. But the reality is just that I missed you and I wanted to see you. I started to try and keep away from you for both our safety, but it’s just been so hard to be alone, and now that Joseph’s gone as well…”

Her shoulders sagged a little, and Gold pulled her into his arms, burying his face in her neck.

“I’ve missed you too,” he said. Even though they had not been all that far apart from each other, they had still been purposefully avoiding each other, and he had felt her absence acutely.

They stayed in the embrace for a long time, until Belle finally pulled free and looked up at him.

“Can we talk?” she asked. “Not about the case, or the entity, or anything like that. Just chat about nothing like normal people and pretend that the end of the world as we know it isn’t nigh.”

Gold smiled. “Of course. I’ll make us some tea. Make yourself at home.”

Belle knew her way around his house well enough by now having stayed over a few times, and when Gold came back into the living room with mugs of tea, she was sitting on the sofa with her feet tucked up underneath her.

“How’ve you been keeping?” Gold asked.

“All right. I’ve taken to power-napping. I’m still not getting anywhere near enough sleep, but at least I’m getting some. I’ve kind of accepted that I’m not able to function on no sleep at all. And I’ve been baking. It fills the nights. I should have brought some of the muffins I made earlier but I ate them all. At this rate I’m going to gain twenty pounds before we make it to Scotland.” She paused. “What’s it like over there?”

“Rainy,” Gold said firmly. “I don’t remember a whole hell of a lot about it, to be honest. I haven’t lived there for fifty years. All I remember are vague impressions, and it’s always raining in all of them. I can’t even remember if it really was raining, or if that’s just a false memory that’s been implanted in my mind because ever since I’ve left Scotland, everyone’s always told me that it’s a rainy place, so my mind automatically assumes that it’s raining in all my memories.” He paused, casting his mind back across the years. “I can’t tell you anything about what it looks like. I’ll be as much a tourist as you are when we get back there, despite the fact that I was born there. Sometimes I’ll see pictures and get a sense of déjà vu, that I know the place not just from pictures but from real experience, but I can’t imagine that I got much travelling done in the first few years of my life, and my father wasn’t exactly the sort for educational day trips to look at the scenery.”

Belle laughed. “It must be weird for you, being a stranger in your own country.”

“Perhaps. I think a part of me will always have a connection to it, though. I stayed with my aunts for long enough not to lose my accent, after all. But I don’t miss it. There’s so little to miss.  My life has been centred over here for so long that I can’t think of a single thing that I would go back to Scotland for, much less stay there for any significant length of time.”

“You’ll definitely be coming back here, then?”

“Yes. My life is here; it always has been. There’s a lot here that I want to stick around for.”

Belle was here, for a start. Or at least, he hoped that she would be. He didn’t want to think about the possible circumstances in which she might not be and he pushed even the slightest possibility of it out of his mind.

It was strange. Up until he had met Belle, he had not really considered anywhere to be his home. He lived here in Storybrooke, of course, but he had never held any particular fascination or affection for the place. It was just another place to rest his head, like the many he had lived in over the years. He had wanted a place to get away from it all where he could be lonely and miserable in peace, and he had found it for a couple of years until Belle had come into his life.

Now, he had Belle here in Storybrooke, and she showed no signs of wanting to move, even if it had been the entity that had brought her here in the first place. He had the mementos of his aunts here, and all the best memories of his childhood with them were all here in New England. Ella was here, and for all the teasing banter that passed between them, Gold had realised over the course of the last few weeks that she was a friend he really didn’t want to lose. Belle coming into his life had been a breath of fresh air in more ways than one. He had begun to look at life through a new lens thanks to her. Whatever had happened in the meantime, all the scares with the entity and the shadow and all the horrible things that they had endured, he didn’t think that he could ever bring himself to regret allowing Belle into his life and into his heart.

Everything had happened rather quickly, and he was only now realising just how big an impact she’d had on him, to the extent of changing his worldview back from the embittered cynic he had become to the impassioned believer that he had once been. He wouldn’t have it any other way, even if it was now threatening to be taken away from him.

“I’ve been thinking,” Belle said, tracing her fingertips around the rim of her mug as was her wont when she was in a contemplative mood.

“Yes?”

“About Joseph and how things are between the three of us.”

Gold looked at her, wishing that he could tell what was going to come next. He’d already worked out that Joseph was attracted to Belle and he’d already worked out that Belle confided a lot in Joseph and was very close to him. He’d been half-expecting her to put an end to his relationship with her for a couple of days now, but the fact that Joseph seemed firmly determined to take a step back out of it all had given him hope for the tentative thing between him and Belle to keep going, despite the fact that she currently felt safer with Joseph than she did with him.

“Go on,” he finally managed to say.

“I was thinking about what Ella told me when she read my palm. I know, I know, you don’t set any store by it, but I think it might help us get our heads around what’s going on right now.”

Gold gave a slow nod. “All right. What were you thinking?”

“Ella said that my heart line was strong and that I had two identical partner lines,” Belle continued. “She thought that meant that I would love deeply twice in my lifetime, and it looked like both loves would be simultaneous.”

Gold took a moment to digest this information. He had heard it before back at Ella’s a few weeks ago, but he hadn’t really taken it in. At the time, he had still been sceptical and cynical, but now that Joseph was on the scene, it seemed like there might be some truth in what Ella had to say.

“Maybe that’s what’s happening,” Belle said. “Leaving the palms out of it, I do like both you and Joseph. I enjoy being with you, and I don’t like it when this stupid Thing keeps us apart. I want to be with you. Both of you. When we were all three of us together in New York, that felt right, how it should be. We’ve all been through so much together. You and me, me and Joseph, and in a way you and Joseph too, although your feelings are probably more platonic. If there really is truth in my hands and I really will love two people at the same time, then I can’t think of anyone I would rather take that chance with than you and Joseph. It would depend on what you both want, of course, and we probably shouldn’t get into the details until we’ve finished dealing with all this upheaval, but I know that it’s possible to be attracted to more than one person, simultaneously and equally.”

Gold nodded, looking down at the swirling dregs in his teacup and wondering what Ella would say if she could read the leaves. Maybe that would give him an answer.

He had been right about Belle being attracted to Joseph and wanting to get closer to him, but she didn’t want this at the expense of her relationship with him. 

“I kissed him goodbye,” Belle continued. “When he came to tell me that he was going back to Scotland, I kissed him goodbye, just in case something happened. And it felt right, in just the same way as kissing you does. You’re very different people, don’t misunderstand me. I don’t think you’re interchangeable or anything like that. But I like you both and I don’t want to have to choose.”

She shook her head. “Honestly. I asked if we could talk about everyday nonsense but I still managed to steer us back to the crappy situation that we’re in right now.”

“No, no, it’s ok. It’s good to have these things out on the table. The last thing that we need right now is for the relationships and friendships that we have to be broken, so I think that you’re right and we should probably park the conversation for a more convenient time, but it’s good that it’s out there and we can think about it.”

Belle nodded. “So much is going to change in the next few weeks. At least, I hope it’s going to. But no matter what happens with the entity, I don’t want anything about my feelings towards you or Joseph to change. I’m constantly doubting and second-guessing myself at the moment, but Joseph said that no matter what, there had to be a kernel of truth in these feelings that underpins them, and that’s what I’m clinging to. I know that no matter how things might be twisted, that kernel of truth is still there.”

“I’m glad.”

There was definitely reason to hope that everything could turn out for the best and that they could make it work, but they really couldn’t afford to get ahead of themselves, not when there was so much that they still didn’t know and that still could go wrong.

“Have you heard from Joseph since he left?” Belle asked.

“Yes. He’s arrived safely and he’s on his way to try and get the other piece of the blade. I’m still not quite sure how he’s going to go about that if our predictions are correct and it’s stowed safely in my old home somewhere. Someone else will be living there and I don’t think they’d appreciate a random stranger turning it upside down in the hunt for cursed relics.”

“I don’t know.” There was a smile on Belle’s face, and it was good to see her in good humour after all the upheaval of the past few days. “The blade gave you and me nightmares when we were close to it. I know that Joseph was unaffected, but if there was someone who was susceptible close by, then they might get the impression that the house was haunted. It might actually be haunted, you never know. We still don’t know for certain how the entity managed to get into my aunt from the house it was bound to. Maybe the place is empty because no-one will live there thanks to the demon in the attic.”

Gold gave a huff of laughter. “If Joseph puts on his old dog collar and ceremonial garb and looks like a priest, then the owners would probably let him in to perform the exorcism on sight. He’d be doing them a favour.”

He had no idea what Joseph was going to do, but he trusted his friend to have a plan, and to let them know when they ought to join him for what would hopefully be the final stage of their plan.


	43. Chapter 43

Upon reflection, Joseph really should have had more of a plan in place before he embarked on this particular trip. He knew, of course, that the house that Gold and his father had inhabited in Glasgow was a house, and would have people living in it, but for some reason his brain had failed to make the connection that if there were people living in the house then he would not be able to just walk in and start poking around in old grandfather clocks or similar for the final piece of the blade.

He had been standing outside the address, on the other side of the road, for about ten minutes, and with every passing moment, he became ever less convinced that he was going about this the right way, and ever more fearful that someone was about to report him for loitering with malicious intent. It certainly looked like he might be casing the place to rob, and in a way he was. He just didn’t think that the house’s current inhabitants would miss what it was that he was going to take from them.

It was beginning to rain, so he decided to cut his losses and go and find himself a nice dry coffee shop to sit in whilst he considered his next move.

The building was one house that had been divided into flats before Malcolm and Gold had moved there, and had been divided up even further by the time that Belle’s aunt was living there, and its tenants had gone from private renters to students, and back again, at least, that was what it looked like from the outside. The place looked too neat and well-maintained and in too gentrified a neighbourhood still to be used by students, even though increased housing prices meant that they were still living in tiny studios designed for students rather than working professionals.

Stirring his coffee, Joseph looked at the house in his mind’s eye and tried to work out where the most likely hiding place for the sword would be.

Naturally, Malcolm would want to put the final piece of the blade in a safe place; it wouldn’t just be lying around in one of the rooms somewhere. And considering that the blade had not been moved all during the conversion of the building into flats out of a single house, it was probably very well hidden, either within the structure of the house itself, wedged into one of the load-bearing walls which would not be knocked out and possibly lead to its discovery, or in a part of the house that would not have been touched by the conversion.

The cellar.

Attic space and basement space would have been converted into flats; people always wanted to get the most out of building when converting it so that they could get the most income from it. But no-one could live in a cellar with no natural light, so it was likely that if it was hidden in a room anywhere, it would be hidden in the cellar.

There were only two drawbacks to this idea, of course. The first was that Joseph didn’t know whether the building had a cellar or not and the second was that even if the place did have a cellar, he was still faced with his original problem of not being able to get into it.

It was probably time to do a bit of lying through his teeth. This was not Joseph’s favourite occupation, nor was he particularly good at it. Whenever they had been trying to gain access to places that did not necessarily want them before, when he and Gold had been working together, he had always let Gold do all the talking. The man had a silver tongue when he wanted, and it had got them out of more than a few scrapes in the past.

The first thing to do would be another trip to the archives to see what he could dig up about the house’s property rights and deeds. The people who worked there were probably getting to know him by name at this point. Once he knew whether the flats were privately owned or managed by a landlord, then he could make his next move.

He finished his coffee and left the cafe as the rain eased off to a light, misty drizzle, still with the threat of a downpour at any moment. Joseph didn’t feel the wet or the cold as he moved through the streets and back past the place that he so desperately wanted to get inside, and he took another good look up at the building. There didn’t appear to be a visible basement of sorts, but there was an undercroft. The house was built on a steep incline so the front, facing the road, was higher than the back, leaving a strange gap that could be filled with either rooms that only faced one way, or like in this case, an open space used as a carpark.

It was an interesting construction, and Joseph decided that he had nothing to lose by investigating. He wandered around the block to the back of the building, ducking under the barrier that marked the undercroft out as private land, and stood there for a while, looking around. Unfortunately the existence of the undercroft itself put paid to his theories of there being a cellar, as it would have been here underneath the carpark and not attached to the rest of the house.

Then again, Joseph thought, looking around at the sturdy brick walls that surrounded him on three sides, the house was very old. It might well have been built before the advent of carparks, and since it had been one house before, well, there was no need for one family to have this much open space for their vehicles.

He went over and examined the walls, looking for any signs that the undercroft had been enclosed at some point. At first glance there was nothing to show that the space had not always been open; the converters had been very clever when they had been making it fit for purpose, but there was metalwork sunk into the bricks that had been sheared flat where it had once stuck out prominently. There had been a gate or door of some kind here before, meaning that he was currently standing in what had been the house’s cellar.

Now, the question was whether this space had been opened up before or after Malcolm had split the blade and hidden this final piece. If he had originally hidden it in an enclosed cellar which had since been converted, well, the thing could be anywhere now.

“Can I help you?”

One of the residents had come out of the building and was looking at Joseph with the wariness of someone who thinks they might be dealing with a person who wasn’t all in the right mind.

Joseph shook his head.

“No, I’ll be moving on now.”

He quickly left the undercroft before any more questions could be asked, making his way in the direction of the archives to see if he could find any building records. First it was census information, then works on magic and curses and ancient cults, and now it was building records. He wondered if the librarians and archivists ever took a look at the things that their patrons had inquired about and borrowed works on and thought they might need some kind of medical help.

The blade had obviously still been there in 1972 when the entity had transferred into Belle’s aunt, so if the undercroft had been opened up before then, he should still be able to find the blade somewhere in the vicinity. Since 1972 was their last concrete date for the entity being bound to the house, then anything that happened after that point would be completely up in the air and he would be back to square one.

It was getting late by the time he finally found the information that he was looking for, and when he saw the building plans signed off by the council, he could have kissed the archivist who had been helping him.

The undercroft had been opened up into a parking area in 1970, prior to which it had just been a unused space under the building with only one way in and out - through the building itself.

Where better place to hide something that definitely did not ought to be found by anyone?

In the waning evening light, Joseph made his way back to the building, hoping that he wasn’t drawing too much attention to himself and that he wouldn’t bump into the same resident who’d found him in the carpark earlier.

Standing in the dim space, Joseph tried to work out what the best hiding place for part of a sword - and presumably the part with the hilt - would be. It had obviously been here since the undercroft was opened as it had been here to infect Belle’s aunt. The trouble was that there weren’t really any hiding places in the open space, so he was going to have to do some detective work. He really hoped that it hadn’t been hidden in what had been the cellar floor and what was now concreted over.

Joseph decided that it would be best to be optimistic, and to that end, he examined the walls first, looking for any kind of hidden niches that might ostensibly hold part of a sword. The brickwork looked to be fairly uniform all the way around the building, and there were no doors or nooks to speak of. Still, he was determined not to give up hope and start chipping away at the floor just yet. He just had to go about this sensibly. The blade must have been hidden extremely securely if it had not been disturbed all throughout the building’s conversion, so he knew that he was going to have a hunt on his hands.

He went over to one of the pillars that provided support for the building above and examined it closely, but again, there was nothing to be seen. The other pillar proved just as fruitless, but something about it caught Joseph’s eye. It wasn’t the same as the first pillar, and he didn’t know what it was about it that was different. 

He went over both pillars again, peering at the brickwork and traces of the metal supports that they were built around, and then he paused.

Considering the age of the original building, would they have been bricking around steel supports at that time? He was no expert on architecture, but he thought not, and he brushed his fingertips over the little nub of exposed metal. A check of the second pillar confirmed the little flicker of hopeful suspicion that had begun in the pit of his stomach ever since that thought had occurred to him. There was no sign of a corresponding piece of metal on the other pillar. That could just be because the cement between the bricks had not eroded enough to expose it, but the cement on the first pillar looked to be fairly intact of itself. In fact, it looked like it had been filled in; it was a very slightly different colour to the pointing on the rest of the pillar.

Joseph took out his pen knife and began to chip away at the cement, alarmed when flecks of brick began to come away as well, until he realised that the brick was not in fact solid, but a facade of cement coated in brick dust.

As despicable as Malcolm had been in trying to pass the entity on to his young son prematurely, Joseph had to admire his dedication to detail and concealment when it came to the final part of the blade.

He continued to scrape with the knife until there was a sudden jolt and he gave way to a hollow beyond. It was only small and thin, just enough to get a blade and a short handle in between the bricks without weakening the pillar’s supporting structure.

Joseph grabbed the handle, heavy with cement, and slid the final part of the sword free of the pillar. It was dirty and tarnished from so many years hidden, and it would take a while to get rid of the bits of cement on the hilt, but it was definitely the same blade, with the same detailed engravings on it.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

Joseph didn’t stick around to find out who the indignant owner of the voice was, and he legged it out of the carpark, pausing only to put the blade piece into his bag for concealment. He wasn’t the most noticeable of people, but he would definitely be noticed if he was running around Glasgow carrying half a sword.

Whoever had hailed him in the carpark did not pursue him, and Joseph made it back to his bed and breakfast in peace. Once he had his breath back, he laid all three pieces of the sword out on the floor. They fit together perfectly, creating a blade of impressive length and weight, with no pieces missing.

They had the blade. Now all they had to do was work out how to use it.


	44. Chapter 44

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Mentions of alcoholism.

**Forty-Four**

Gold had not really counted on just how nervous a flyer Belle was going to be. He had assumed that all her worries about being on a long-haul flight stemmed from her worries about falling asleep and possibly unleashing the entity in a confined space, but as they sat in the departure lounge in Boston airport, Belle clutching the largest cup of coffee that could be found in the place, he began to realise that her fears went slightly deeper than that. Her hands were shaking around the cardboard cup, and Gold could tell that it wasn’t just due to the caffeine rush that she was undergoing.

“I’m not good on planes anyway,” she muttered, watching the runway as another plane took off. It was still quite a while before their own flight was due to leave, but Belle had insisted on getting to the airport with plenty of time to spare in case of any problems. That had been Gold’s first clue that she was very scared about this journey. “I wouldn’t be good on planes even if I didn’t have this Thing in my head. I just can’t understand how they don’t fall out of the sky.”

Gold gave a soft laugh; it wasn’t her fear that amused him, far from it, but more the vehemence with which she was speaking out against the planes and their constant fight against gravity.

“You know that plane travel is the safest mode of transport,” he reassured her.

“Yes, I know, but when things do go wrong, they go spectacularly wrong. There may well be less plane accidents, but…”

She tailed off as Gold leaned in and kissed her cheek, taking the empty coffee cup from her.

“We’re going to be fine,” he said.

“I hope so.” Belle looked down at her hands, folded meekly in her lap. “I’ve only been on one plane journey before, when Dad and I came over from Australia.”

“And nothing happened then, did it?”

“Well, I can’t really remember, it’s a long time ago and I was so high on caffeine that everything’s a blur.”

Gold gave a soft huff of laughter at the image. Thankfully Belle’s caffeine tolerance had improved since then, otherwise they could have a very interesting flight on their hands.

“I think that if anything had gone drastically wrong on that plane, you would have remembered it.”

“Hmm.” Belle didn’t seem at all convinced and continued to stare out of the window at the planes taking off and landing.

They had opted to take a daytime flight in the hope that Belle would be able to stay awake better during it, even if it might mess up their sleep pattern at the other end. She was far more concerned with making the journey go as smoothly as possible, and once they were back on solid ground they could deal with whatever fallout from that might come. The flight to London was seven hours long, and then another hour and a half from Heathrow up to Glasgow, so it would be gone midnight by the time they arrived in Scotland. Joseph had promised that he would be waiting for them at the airport, for which Gold was grateful as he probably wouldn’t be in any fit state to do anything after so many hours in the air, displaced from a sense of time.

He checked his phone. He’d had a message from Joseph saying that he had been successful in locating the final part of the blade and that they should come on over to the UK to get everything together and ready for what came next.

That at least implied that Joseph had an idea of what came next, which was reassuring in some respects and absolutely terrifying in some others. Things were definitely coming to a head now. They had the blade, and there would be no turning back from this.

Gold looked over at Belle, who had taken out a book and was trying to read it, but as she hadn’t turned a page in ten minutes, she didn’t seem to be succeeding in her attempts to distract herself from the imminent flight.

It seemed like such a long time since he had first met her in the bar, despondent and at the end of her rope, desperate for something to happen to end the misery that she was living in. They had come so far in that time and had endured so much. The couldn’t stop their quest now, even if the speed with which it was unfurling was growing into a rapid and frightening pace. They were so close to reaching their goal, but there was so much that was still up in the air, things that would not be revealed to them until the last possible moment. Gold could appreciate that Joseph wanted to catch the entity off guard as much as possible now that they had the blade, especially because once it was re-forged, well, they had no idea what was going to happen. The entity would want it just as much as they did, although for different ends. Naturally his friend was playing his cards close to his chest, but Gold didn’t really enjoy flying blind like this.

He looked out of the airport window at the planes again and gave a snort of ironic laughter at his own bad joke. Belle gave a sigh and closed her book; Gold could tell that she hadn’t read a word of it. She leaned in against his side and Gold put an arm around her.

“I just want it all to be over,” she said.

“It will be soon,” he assured her. “Just a few more hours and you’ll be back on solid ground.”

“Not just the flight,” Belle said. “Everything. I just want everything to be normal for once. I can’t really say that I want everything to get back to normal because it was never normal in the first place. I really want to see what normal looks like. It’s all happening so quickly. We went through months of not really knowing what was going on, after years of uncertainty for me. Now we’re on the right track and we’re following it. It makes me wonder if maybe the entity’s lulling us into a false sense of security. Everything’s been buried for so long and now we’re prodding the sleeping lions. It feels like we’re tempting fate, but at the same time I know that there’s no other way of defeating this thing.”

“I know it’s scary, but sometimes you’ve just got to follow the path and see where it leads.”

“I guess that without taking a chance we’ll never know.”

“Exactly.”

Belle yawned and scrubbed her hands over her face, pale and free from make-up. “I’m just so tired, Rum. I’m tired of being tired. When we first began this thing, I was willing to do just about anything to get the darkness out of me, but now it’s taking its toll. I think it’s taking its toll on all of us. No matter what happens, none of us are going to be the same people that we were before all this happened.”

It was quite a chilling thought. This case had brought them all together and it was so deeply intertwined with their lives. Ever since the reveal that the entity had been originally bound to Gold’s bloodline, he could no longer treat this like any other investigation he had made in the past. Things were different now, irrevocably so, and he was going to have to live with all these revelations for the rest of his days. He could only hope that once it was all over, they would all have space for closure. Even Joseph wasn’t going to be unaffected. This was the case that had pulled him out of his depressive episode and might well send him back into it if things took a turn for the worse. Gold shook his head; he really didn’t want to think about the possibility of things taking a turn for the worse.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said to Belle, trying to change the subject. “Whatever happens, I think that some good will come of it.”

Belle smiled. “Thank you. I’m so glad that I have you guys to pull me up when everything’s threatening to overwhelm me.”

Gold pressed a kiss into the messy nest of curls piled up on the top of Belle’s head.

“We will always be here for you.”

Their flight was called, and Belle got up from her seat with some reluctance, heading slowly towards the gate; Gold followed her. He and Joseph might not be able to pull her out of the darkness completely just yet, but they were sure as hell going to help her survive it.

X

It was two o’clock in the morning by the time they got into the arrivals hall in Glasgow airport, and there was practically no-one around except for Joseph, sitting on a bench surrounded by coffee cups and looking half-asleep. Gold wondered if any of the airport employees had tried to move him on, thinking that he was homeless.

He looked up when he saw them, failing to stifle a huge yawn.

“I don’t know why I’m so tired,” he grumbled as they came towards him. “I still haven’t got over my own jetlag yet.”

Belle smiled and wrapped her arms around him in a close hug. “It’s good to see you again, Joseph.”

He laughed. “I was only gone for a week, but it’s good to see you both as well. Welcome to the homeland, Belle. Welcome back to the homeland, Gold. I won’t ask you if you can still navigate your way around. Come on, let’s get out of here before they take us out with the rubbish.”

They had to wait a long while for the shuttle into the city centre, and there weren’t many cabs to be had at that time in the morning. Those that were about were mainly filled with drunken students on their way home from nights out.

“Oh, to be so young and impressionable once more,” Gold muttered. Belle gave a huff of laughter, but she was still clutching his hand tightly as they found a free cab and the three of them piled into it.

“I’ve got you a room in a hotel in the centre,” Joseph explained. “I know that we might want to stick together throughout the next few days with a lot of upheaval, but I don’t think that having the blade in proximity to you two will be a good idea, and I want to keep an eye on it in case anything happens. As I’m not affected by its presence, I think it’s best that it stays with me and I stay away. I trust that you’ll be all right sharing a room for a while?”

Belle nodded. They had not shared a room or indeed a bed since that night in New York with the three of them, but right now, so close to the conclusion of their quest, Gold certainly wanted to stay as close to Belle as possible, and he knew that she felt the same way. In an unfamiliar city in stressful circumstances, he wanted to be on hand in case the entity should seize any kind of opportunity to cause havoc and derail their plans.

“I guess we’ll reconvene in the morning then,” Joseph said as the cab pulled up outside Belle and Gold’s hotel. He gave a heavy sigh. “You know, it’s usually round about now that I say I could really use a drink.”

Belle reached out and touched his cheek. “You’re doing so well,” she said. “Don’t fall off the wagon now.”

“I promise.”

The taxi left them then, and Belle and Gold walked into their hotel. The night receptionist paid them no mind; to her they were just another couple of travellers getting in off a late-night flight and needing a place to rest their weary heads. By the time they reached their room, Gold was about ready to sleep for a week, but something in the back of his mind kept him from dropping off. He stared up at the ceiling in the darkness, then glanced over to Belle. She was on her side with her back to him, curled up small, and he just wanted to curl up around her, protecting her and also protecting himself from whatever it was that they were about to embark upon.

“Belle?” he whispered. “Are you awake?”

“Yes,” came the soft reply.

“Belle… Can I hold you?”

There was a long pause.

“Yes,” she said eventually, and there was almost a sob in her voice. “Yes, yes, please hold me, Rum.”

Gold snuggled in close behind her, wrapping his arms around her, and he closed his eyes, burying his face in her hair. He didn’t know what the next few days might bring, but for now, this was enough.

 


	45. Chapter 45

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gets a bit smutty and NSFW, but I wouldn't call it above an M rating.

_Belle was there, standing in the centre of the circle, as still and silent as all of the stones around them._

_Except it wasn’t Belle. This was the Dark One, just as it had been on the night when they had first slept together. Its eyes were full dark and soulless, with nothing of Belle left in their depths, and it was smiling maliciously. It was a victorious expression, and it unnerved Gold even more than his face-to-face encounter in the aftermath of his and Belle’s love-making had done._

_He wanted to look away. He couldn’t stand to see Belle reduced to an empty vessel, the Dark One having taken over completely. He wanted to run; every nerve in him was screaming to move and get away, that he was in terrible danger, but Gold was rooted to the spot, as if he had no control over his own limbs._

_The moonlight glinted off geometrically patterned steel..._

Gold woke with a start, panting heavily and covered in cold sweat. Sitting up and pulling off his soaked t-shirt, he scrubbed his hands over his face, trying to wipe away the images from his nightmare that were still imprinted on his brain.

That was when he noticed that he was alone in the room, the mussed sheets beside him being the only indication that Belle had been there beside him.  Gold’s blood ran cold, and he wondered how much truth there was in the dream that he had just woken from.

“Belle?” he tried, but there was no voice behind the whisper, the lingering fear still choking him.

Presently he heard the toilet flush in the adjoining bathroom, and a few moments later, Belle slipped out. She was all right. She was still Belle, with her tired blue eyes and her concerned expression.

“Are you all right?” she asked, coming over and sitting on the bed beside him.

Gold nodded. “Just a nightmare.”

Belle reached over and cupped his cheek. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s hardly your fault.”

“I don’t know. I feel like it is.” She paused. “What happened?”

Gold shook his head. “I’d rather just forget about it.”

“All right. I was just thinking that Joseph had said that the nightmares might be clues as to how to defeat the entity.”

“No, I really don’t want this one to have any degree of truth in it.”

There was silence for a long time, Belle still stroking Gold’s cheek, soothing him in a way that made him never want her to stop. Finally her fingers faltered, and he reached up to keep them pressed against his skin. If what he had seen was a vision of the future, then he wanted to make the most of any closeness with Belle that he had, and he leaned in, pressing his forehead against hers.

“Had we failed?” Belle asked quietly.

“I don’t know. It felt like we had.”

Throughout this case and all of the revelations and nightmares that had come with it, Gold had always been the optimistic one out of the two of them, as much as it went against his usually cynical nature to be so. Now though, he was tired, and scared, and in a place that for all he was born there was still unfamiliar, and he couldn’t summon up any kind of positivity for Belle.

She wrapped her arms around him.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” she said. “Tomorrow’s another day, and Joseph will tell us his plan, and we’ll take every day as it comes. Every hour, every minute. If this is the end of us, then I want to make every moment count.”

Belle kissed him then, a firm and fierce kiss that left no doubt as to her intentions, and Gold surrendered into it willingly, pulling her in as close as he could, wrapping his arms around her and never wanting to let go. They might as well start living every day as if it were their last, because the prospect of it actually being so was too great to ignore.

Belle’s hands scraped down his chest and under his waistband, cradling his cock and balls as he began to harden under his touch, and Gold pushed up the hem of her camisole to expose her breasts, cupping them and pinching her nipples into hard, puckered buds which he bent to kiss. Belle moaned, shivering against his lips, and he felt more blood rush south.

The memory of waking up to the Dark One in bed beside him flew into his mind unbidden, and he broke away suddenly.

“I…”

Belle gave a sad smile, turning away.

“I know. I remember what happened the last time we did this too.”

“I want to, Belle, I really do. I just don’t want either of us to get hurt.”

He wanted to touch her so badly, to bring her the wonderful release that she so desperately needed, to make her feel good when she was feeling so lost. He wanted that too. Here in the darkness, surrounded by the memories of nightmares and waking nightmares alike, neither of them truly able to believe that everything would be all right at the end of it all, they were more vulnerable together than they had ever been. They could be each other’s salvation, but right now it seemed like they were just as likely to be each other’s ruin.

“Will you just hold me, then?” Belle asked. Her voice was small, broken, and Gold nodded.

“Of course, sweetheart.”

They snuggled back down below the covers, and Gold was not at all surprised when Belle shed her pyjamas. He shoved his own bottoms down and off, wanting to feel her warm skin against his, to keep her as close as he could in defiance of the voice at the back of both of their minds telling them that this was the beginning of the end.

Gold didn’t think that he would get back to sleep tonight. The nightmare had been too jarring and the adrenaline rush from it was still coursing through his veins and he was still half-hard from Belle’s ministrations. Belle’s breathing also wasn’t showing any signs of softening and evening out into slumber.

Gold closed his eyes.

God, he was in love with her.

X

Gold must have dropped off to sleep again because when he woke, he saw that it was bright outside the windows and his phone told him that it was already late into the morning. Coming back to himself, he realised that it must have been the phone that had woken him; Joseph had texted to ask if they were in any fit state to meet up and discuss the next steps of the plan yet.

Belle was still curled up around him, and Gold could feel the stickiness from their activities last night on his skin. The intense intimacy of their night had caught up with them and they’d brought each other that much needed sweet release, another taste of pleasure to take them into whatever the day might bring. They’d been cut short once again when it became apparent that neither of them had thought to bring any protection, but that hadn’t stopped them from touching. He remembered the feel of her hands on his cock and her tight warmth as she’d come around his fingers, and he pressed a kiss to her brow. Whatever happened, they would still have those sweet memories to see them through.

“Morning,” Belle said as he tried to twist out of her hold as gently as possible. “I haven’t been to sleep, so don’t worry about waking me up.”

She opened her eyes and pushed her tousled hair out of her face. “I guess this is it, now. Judgement day.”

Gold nodded. “Yes. Although calling it judgement day does seem to be tempting fate somewhat. Let’s not make it any more ominous than it has to be. Joseph wants to know if we’re awake.”

Belle snorted. “I don’t think I’ll be sleeping for the next week,” she muttered. “Although I don’t think that my brain is awake.” She paused. “Maybe that’s worse. I haven’t had the entity take over whilst I’ve been awake for a while now but if I’m this spaced out, then it might see an opportunity and take it.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Gold said quickly. “You’ve been doing so well at fighting against it lately; I think you might be stronger than you think.”

“I really hope so.”

They fell into silence.

“Shall I get Joseph to meet us for breakfast in an hour?”

Belle nodded. “It’s probably lunch time, though.”

Gold looked at the time again. It would certainly be lunch time by the time they met up with Joseph.

“We’ll call it brunch.”

Belle got out of bed and padded over to the bathroom to take a shower as Gold texted Joseph back, and he took a moment to admire the planes of her bare body as she moved. It wasn’t a sight that he had really had all that much leisure to enjoy what with one thing and another.

He really hoped that it wasn’t going to be the last time he saw it.

Gold shook himself out of that mentality and pushed the thought to the back of his mind. They had been so desperate last night, in the wake of his nightmare, when the darkness was making everything seem so much bleaker. Now in the warm light of day, there was more room for positivity. Even so, the dream that he’d had was still imprinted on his mind.

Joseph was waiting for them in the restaurant where they’d agreed to meet and eat whatever meal it happened to be time for, and he was looking cautiously optimistic, which was better than Gold felt. Still, seeing the determination in his friend’s face did make Gold feel a little less morbid about the whole thing. It seemed that Joseph had a plan, at least.

“We need to recreate the circumstances of the original summoning,” Joseph began once their food had arrived and the server had left them in peace in their booth. Gold looked across at the stack of books that were sitting on the seat next to Joseph and wondered just how many journals he’d had to trawl through in order to get what he needed to know. “We’ll need the sword re-forged as it was in the beginning, and we’ll need to be in the same place as the original summoning took place. That’s the part I’m having trouble with. If the original summoning was a couple of millennia ago, then there’s nothing to say that wherever it took place is even accessible any more. It could be in the middle of a sewage treatment plant for all we know.”

Joseph hauled one of the heavy books onto the table and opened at a map of Scotland, covered in fine pencil lines.

“We can narrow it down a little. Summonings usually happen at the places where the barriers between worlds are at their weakest. Usually, these are the points at which ley lines cross.”

He traced the ley lines that intersected all over the map. “It’s likely to be at a point where there are more than two ley lines connecting.”

Gold peered at the map and brought his finger down on an intersection.

“There,” he said. “That’s where it’ll be.”

He was pointing to an open space about twenty miles away from Glasgow.

Joseph and Belle both looked at him with a mixture of incredulity and admiration. 

“Are you sure?”

Gold nodded. “I may not have been to Scotland for years, but I know the Dunbroch standing stones. The aunts kept pictures of them on the fridge; they said they used to perform ceremonies there before they came over to America. I knew that the stones in the nightmares looked familiar but I couldn’t place them; I’d never seen them in darkness before.”

Belle and Joseph looked at each other and Joseph shrugged.

“It’s as good and likely a place as any. Standing stones have always held power; so Nimue would have known to go there to summon the power she needed.”

“I guess that this is where we have to go,” Belle said. “What’s going to happen when we get there?”

“I don’t know,” Joseph said truthfully. “I was hoping that we’d find out more when we actually got there. Once the sword has been re-forged, we’ll take it to the standing stones and go from there. If a blood sacrifice was needed to summon the entity, then it’s likely that a blood sacrifice will be needed to send it back from whence it came, but that would just be cutting a palm, nothing tremendously drastic.” He paused. “We’re probably going to have to plan on the entity making an appearance.”

Belle nodded. “I’d guessed as much. Can’t really banish it if it’s not there to banish. So, when do we start?”

“I can take the sword to the smith this afternoon,” Joseph said. “I imagine that we can start whenever you’re ready to start.”

Belle looked pensive for a long time, staring into the middle distance without looking at either Gold or Joseph. Finally she reached across the table and took one of each of the men’s hands in each of hers.

“Let’s get this over and done with as quickly as possible.”


	46. Chapter 46

**Forty-Six**

“Father! I didn’t recognise you without the collar! How are you? It’s been a long time since you were last in our neck of the woods. What brings you here today?”

Joseph smiled at the enthusiastic greeting from Anton. The gentle giant had been on the Vatican’s books as a discreet go-to for any one-of-a-kind blacksmithing projects that they required that could not be made in-house, and Joseph had come to him for assistance more than once during the course of his investigative career.

“Just call me Joseph, Anton,” he said. “There’s a reason I’m not wearing the collar anymore.”

Anton grimaced. “You left the priesthood?”

“Not voluntarily.”

There was a moment of understanding between the two men and Anton just gave a discreet nod, knowing not to delve any further into the details.

“So, what can I do for you today, Joseph? Something tells me that you’re not just visiting an old friend for old times’ sake.”

Joseph opened his backpack and took out the three pieces of the sword, each individually wrapped in chamois. Something had made him want to keep them as separate as possible for as long as possible. Anton picked up the pieces and brought them over to his desk in the back of the forge, carefully unrolling the chamois and spreading the pieces out. Joseph had cleaned them all thoroughly and there were no signs of dust, cement or grave dirt left. The sword looked as if it had just come from the crafter’s whetting stone.

Apart from the fact that it was in three pieces of course.

“Woah.” Joseph could tell that Anton was impressed with the piece.

“Have you ever seen anything like it before?” he asked.

The blacksmith shook his head. “No, this is a new one on me. The markings on the blade are something worth seeing; that’s a level of detail I couldn’t hope to achieve, and I consider myself to be a master craftsman.” He looked at each piece of the blade in turn with his practised eye, running his fingertips over the steel with a delicacy that the uninitiated would not have thought possible from his huge frame.

“Is something the matter?” Joseph could feel himself beginning to panic. He had done very well at not letting panic take hold of him throughout this investigation, even when faced with the shadow of the entity itself back in Belle’s apartment, but now that they were so close to everything being over and the thing being banished, the idea of a roadblock at this late stage was enough to make him start hyperventilating.

“No, not really,” Anton said. “It’s just strange, because I can’t see a smith’s mark anywhere on it. Normally blades will have some kind of identifying feature to show who made them, especially one as intricately worked and as obviously old as this one is. With such work having gone into it, you’d think that the person who made it would want their mark on it. I know I’d be proud of such a work.”

Joseph nodded. “I suppose you’re right.”

Anton raised an eyebrow. “You’re not convinced, though. There’s obviously a lot more to this sword than meets the eye then, isn’t there? There always is with you.”

Joseph shrugged apologetically. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, don’t be. It makes life far more interesting when I’m dealing with your artefacts. What’s the story behind this one? Actually, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know if it’s going to jump up and attack me the moment I get it on the anvil. What do you want doing with it?”

“Can you put it back together? Re-forge it into one blade?”

Anton nodded slowly. “I should be able to,” he said. “The breaks are fairly clean, but this is very strong steel, and it makes me wonder what broke it in the first place.”

“That’s something I’d like to know too,” Joseph said. “Sadly, I don’t think that we’re destined to know any time soon since the man who broke it is currently decomposing in an unmarked grave in New York.” He paused. “That’s where we got the end piece from, actually.”

Anton dropped the end-piece that he had been holding and looked at Joseph incredulously.

“That is not the sort of thing you tell me when I’m about to do work for you.”

“Sorry. Morbid humour comes with the territory in this line of work.”

The two old friends fell into silence for a while as Anton stoked up his fire and got the forge ready for business once more.

“So, if you’re not working for the Vatican anymore, I take it that this is for a personal project?” Anton asked.

“Yes. I was contacted by an old associate of mine to help him with a pro bono case he’d taken on. This is the result of that.”

“I see.” Anton fell quiet again as he worked. “You know, Joseph, this isn’t one of those broken things whereby when I put it back together again, all hell’s going to break loose because it was the only thing keeping evil at bay?”

“Well…”

“Joseph, I’m telling you, if this is the sword of one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse I will not be held responsible for unleashing Armageddon out of my forge.”

“It’s not one of the four horsemen, we’ve got them down in the Vatican vaults,” Joseph said. “And whilst re-forging the sword might unleash something, it’s also the only way to make sure that it goes away for good.”

Holding the sword’s handle piece, Anton gave Joseph a look.

“You’re not inspiring a lot of confidence here, Joe.”

“I know.”

“I’m doing this as a favour, you know.”

“You’ll be all right,” Joseph said. “It’s not after you or me.”

“That’s hardly reassuring! How do you know that?”

“It’s after a specific bloodline, one that you and I are not part of. Actually, what’s your blood type?”

“O negative, what the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“It’s not after you,” Joseph repeated. “And we really need it re-forged or else…”

That was a point, actually. Joseph didn’t know what would happen if the sword was not re-forged and the entity remained trapped within Belle, other than Belle’s life would be hell for the rest of its natural duration, however long that might be. And after it had come to an end, well, there was no telling what the entity might do.

Anton sighed. “Ok, I get it. It’s one of those things where you have to screw it all up before it gets better, right?”

“Pretty much,” Joseph agreed.

“Well, like I said, they’re nice clean breaks. You can pick it up same time tomorrow, if the whatever it is hasn’t jumped out and murdered me.”

“Anton, I promise that you’re not in danger.” Belle and Gold, on the other hand…

After saying his goodbyes to Anton, Joseph left the forge and made his way back to his hotel, texting Gold to let him know the latest. Once inside, he threw himself down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling before pressing his hands over his face and letting out a long, shaking breath.

He was absolutely terrified, and he didn’t have anywhere to turn to with this fear. For so long he had just been following where the investigation led, and he had been determined that he was going to get to the bottom of it and get Belle leading a normal life. Now, everything was finally weighing down on him. What if it all went wrong again? He was holding his friends’ lives in his hands here, and he couldn’t bear it if it turned out that he had miscalculated. He’d never forgive himself if anything happened to either of them.

He closed his eyes and clasped his hands together.

“Father… Even throughout the worst of times You’ve always been there, reminding me that whatever happens, it happens for a reason. You’ve set me on this path and I know I have to see it through to its conclusion and solve this obstacle that You’ve placed in my path. I know that You are watching over me, but please, please watch over Belle and Rum as well. They need Your protection so much more than I do. Whatever sacrifices I need to make, I will make them, as long as it keeps them safe from the power they have no control over. Please.”

It took him a long time to fall asleep, a thousand terrifying scenarios leaving him paralysed with terror.

X

“Hi Joseph.” Anton’s voice was cheerful as Joseph came into the forge, and Joseph took that as a good sign.

“Is it done?” he asked. “No strange spirits jumping out and attacking you in the night?”

“Not that I know of.” Anton held up the sword, back in one piece. If he hadn’t seen the blade in its component parts the previous day, Joseph might never have believed that it had once been in three pieces; the joins were seamless.

“I’m not done sharpening it yet,” Anton said. “If you can hang around for a few minutes then I’ll get it back to full working order for you. Blades without straight edges always take more work in that respect.”

Joseph took a seat opposite the blacksmith and watched him work on the blade. There was something awe-inspiring about the sword now that it was all in one piece, and he could quite well see how it had become a treasured family heirloom passed down throughout the centuries. He shivered at the thought of everything that had would have seen, and at the thought of that first blood sacrifice that Nimue had made so many years ago that had set all of these events into motion.

Anton gave the blade a final sweep with the whetting stone and gave a nod of satisfied approval.

“There,” he said. “It’s done.”

The moment he laid it down on the bench, it began, and both Joseph and Anton took a step back.

The geometric patterns on the blade began to move, swirling over the metal. Nimue’s name flickered, turning into hundreds of different names in turn, moving too fast for Joseph to get a proper read on them.

Finally, the names stopped, although the pattern kept shifting along the blade.

Joseph felt a shiver down his spine. The blade now read:

_Raymond Gold_

X

With nothing much to do until the blade was reformed and they made the journey to the standing stones, Belle and Gold were killing time sight-seeing in Glasgow. Of course, as soon as Belle had seen the second-hand antiquarian bookshop hidden away in the basement of an old house, she had to go in, and Gold was more than happy to humour her. She’d been wandering around the small space in a taste of ecstatic wonder for about half an hour when she suddenly stilled, the book in her hands falling to the floor with a loud smack.

“Belle? Are you ok?”

Gold stooped to pick up the book and put it back on the shelf.

“It worked,” Belle whispered.

“What?”

Belle turned to look at him. Her eyes were wide with unadulterated terror.

“Help me!” she gasped.

Gold felt his blood run cold in his veins. The blade was complete again. It had worked. Joseph had done what needed to be done and now…

Belle blinked, her eyes turning from bright blue to full black, like pools of liquid darkness.

“Belle?” he said softly, trying to appeal to whatever traces of her might be left inside. It was obvious that the entity taking control despite the fact she had been perfectly awake and alert just a second before was linked to the blade. They’d had no idea what would happen once it was re-forged, but they knew that the Dark One was going to make an appearance. Gold just hadn’t figured on it being quite so soon.

“Sorry,” the entity said, in a voice that had once been Belle’s and once been lovely but that now held only coldness. “Belle’s not here right now.”

Gold felt himself begin to panic. Not only had the entity taken control of a fully awake Belle, it was the middle of the afternoon and they were out in the middle of a city. If it decided that it was going to cause chaos now, then Gold had no idea what to do to stop it. If it decided that now the blade was complete, it was going to transfer back into Gold, then again, he had no idea how to stop it, and he dreaded to think of what might happen.

“Dark One,” he began, deciding that staying on the right side of the entity might be a good idea. He really didn’t want to provoke it whilst it was inhabiting Belle’s body. “What do you want?”

“You know what I want.” The entity smiled. “You’ve always known what I want. And this time, I’m finally in a position to get it. If you want Belle back, then you know what you have to do and where you have to go.”

The entity spun on its heel and hared out of the bookshop, up the steps and down the street before Gold had a chance to react. He raced up after it as fast as he was able, but it was long gone, out of sight around the corner.

“Belle!”

He ran after it for as long as he could, but he was soon forced to admit that he was not as young and fit as he used to be and he had no idea where the thing had gone; he could be running around Glasgow blindly for hours. He grabbed his phone and dialled Joseph. His friend picked up immediately without any pre-emptory pleasantries.

_“What’s happened?”_

“The entity’s taken over Belle. It’s run off and I can’t find it. Joseph, what if it hurts someone? What if it hurts Belle?”

_“It’s all right. We know where it’s going, and we know what it wants.”_

“Where is it going?”

_“We have to take the blade to the Dunbroch standing stones. I think that setting a trap with live bait is the only way.”_

Gold gulped. As much as he didn’t like the sound of being bait, he knew that they really didn’t have a choice.

 


	47. Chapter 47

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note: Belle is being possessed by the entity throughout this chapter.

Night was beginning to fall by the time Joseph and Gold reached the standing stones, and Gold didn’t think that the adrenaline rush of horror that he had felt earlier in the afternoon when the entity had taken over Belle had died away yet.

His heart was still pounding, and every slightest movement in the twilight and every faint sound of nature in the trees around him was enough to set him on edge. He knew that Joseph wasn’t faring much better, and that gave him a degree of comfort. They were in a terrible situation and they had no idea what was going to happen next, but at least they knew that they were not alone throughout it and they could both be terrified together.

The time for trying to save face was past; they were in this together now and it would be hypocritical for either of them to claim some kind of superiority when it came to controlling their fear.

“Well, here we are.” Joseph looked up at the stone circle. The only illumination came from the full moon, shining straight down onto the stones and giving them an ethereal air that Gold could really have well done without at that point. He had only ever seen the stones in bright daylight in photographs, and whilst he tried to think of his aunts performing rituals of protection and strength here, all he could see was the image from his nightmare, of the entity in Belle’s form in the middle of the stones.

What if the dream had been prophetic? Before they had been showing him distilled visions of the past, the entity’s initial summoning. What if now they were showing the future? Was there any hope for Belle at all?

Joseph took a deep breath and pressed on, entering the stone circle and looking around it. Gold followed him.

He could quite see why the coven had used it for their ceremonies and why Nimue had come here to summon the entity and set off this chain of events. There was a distinct energy about the place that he couldn’t define, one that could be used for both good and evil. He had never considered himself particularly attuned to such things, but there were some places in the world whose power and majesty could not help but affect even the most mundane of humans.

“You can feel it too, can’t you?” Joseph was looking at him with interest. Now, Joseph was definitely someone who could pick up on those sorts of vibes, and had often done in the past, much to Gold’s derision and amusement when they had been working together. He was being made to eat his words now.

“Yes. I don’t know what it is and I don’t know that I like it, but I can certainly feel it.” He went over to Joseph, who was laying down the long package wrapped in cardboard and chamois that he had been carrying ever since they had first met up in the wake of Belle’s disappearance. Gold knew that it was the sword. A part of him was morbidly curious to see it in its full splendour, but the rest of him wanted to get as far away from it as he possibly could.

“What about Belle?” he asked, trying to pull his mind away from the sword and what would have to be done with it, if anything. “Where is she?”

“She’s close,” Joseph replied. “The entity’s biding its time. It was waiting for us. You know that feeling you get when the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end and you know that you’re being watched?”

Suddenly Gold felt it too, and he shivered.

“How did it even get here?” he murmured. He knew that the entity had made Belle walk miles whilst under its control before, but even so, it would have taken her a long time to walk the distance from the city centre out to the standing stones.

“I think it’s safe to assume that the entity has brains and logic and probably got a taxi like we did,” Joseph said. “Belle is probably not putting up as much resistance as she usually does.”

Gold really didn’t like the sound of that.

“Are you ready?” Joseph continued. He was crouching by the sword, preparing to take it out of its wrappings. “Things are probably going to happen very quickly and we’ll have to think on our feet.”

Considering that neither of them had any idea what was going to happen next, Gold didn’t think that he would ever be ready.

“No,” he said truthfully. “Are you?”

“I’ve not been ready for anything about this case,” Joseph admitted. “But we’ve passed the point of no return now. I don’t think that we’re going to get Belle back without this.”

Gold nodded. His own fears were secondary now; Belle was the most important thing, for both him and Joseph, and they had to put aside their feelings and do this for the woman that Gold loved and that Joseph was very fond of, if he did not love her as well.

“Let’s do it.”

Joseph untied the strings that held the wrappings together, and at last, Gold saw the blade in its entirety for the first time. It was certainly impressive, even if the moving patterns on the blade were unnerving him. He started on seeing his name on the blade where Nimue’s had been before.

“Yes, I didn’t want to mention that before,” Joseph said. “At least we know we’re definitely on the right track.”

Gold didn’t respond, and they both just stared at the sword.

“So now what happens?” Gold asked.

“It’s your family heirloom.” Joseph shrugged. “It has your name on it. I think that if that’s not an indication as to its true owner and intended wielder, then nothing is.”

That statement gave Gold hope. His family had always held the Dark One within their bloodline, but at the same time, they had also always held the means to banish it, even if they didn’t know it.

“Here goes nothing.”

He grabbed the sword hilt and stood up; the weapon was surprisingly heavy and he had to rest the flat of the blade on his other palm. It was surprisingly warm to the touch, as if it had recognised its true master.

Nothing happened at first, but as he looked at the blade, he saw that the movement of the etched patterns gradually slowed until it stopped altogether. The thing was no longer in flux. The blade was complete and it was back in the hands of the family that it had always been a part of.

“It’s done.”

The voice came from the trees to the left of the stones, and Gold felt the familiar chill run through his veins on recognising it to be that of the entity. He and Joseph both looked over in that direction to see the entity coming out of the darkness towards them. It was wearing Belle’s sunglasses, which it took off to reveal the full dark eyes. There was triumph in its smile, and as it reached the stones, Gold realised with horror that this was the scene that he had seen in his dream. He took a deep breath, forcing down the metallic taste of fear at the back of his throat. If this was the dream, then this was just the beginning. They had not lost out against the entity yet.

“I knew that I could count on you, Rum,” the entity said. “I’ve been seeking you out for so long, ever since your father first betrayed me.”

“That’s rich,” Gold snorted. “The last time we spoke you told me that you thought I’d been a rather pathetic child.”

“Well, you were, but look how you’ve proved yourself now.”

The entity took a step closer, and Joseph stepped in between them. The entity’s eyes narrowed.

“This does not concern you, Priest. Many have tried in your stead before you. All have failed. You must know that a mere man of the cloth can’t stop me.”

“You must know that I’m not a man of the cloth,” Joseph replied. He was trying to stay calm but he could hear the quavering in his voice. So, it seemed, could the entity, which just gave a high, hard laugh.

“Don’t fret, little man. I have no quarrel with you. You’ll be able to walk away from this unharmed. As for you…” It peered around Joseph to grin at Gold, still holding the blade. “Well, I guess that it depends how much of a struggle you put up.”

Gold’s mind was racing, not stopping at any useful thought, just going over and over everything that they had talked about over the past few months and coming to no real conclusions. The one thing that he kept coming back to was that in order for the entity to be banished fully, blood would have to be spilled.

His blood, certainly. Belle’s blood? Perhaps.

The sword was complete again, but the entity had not made any immediate transfer over to Gold like he had perhaps, subconsciously, been expecting it to do. The conclusion that Gold had come to was that it was trapped within Belle. Her own mind had succeeded in pushing out its shade on a few occasions, but it was still bound to her by her blood.

“Belle,” he began.

“She’s not here anymore,” the entity said. Gold ignored it.

“Belle,” he repeated. “If you’re in there, if you can hear me, know that I don’t want to hurt you, but this is the only way to get the entity out. I have to draw blood.”

The entity’s smile was positively gleeful and downright terrifying.

“Now you’re talking.”

It held out its hand, and Gold lifted the sword, heavy and unwieldy. How he managed to just slice the palm and not take her hand off altogether was a miracle, but one for which he was nonetheless incredibly grateful.

Belle’s body fell sideways, and Joseph rushed to catch her, bringing her down gently to the ground. Her eyes were closed, seemingly peaceful, and he checked her pulse and breathing, nodding to Gold. She was still alive.

He took out a handkerchief and set to bandaging her hand, and Gold returned his attention up to the space that Belle had just occupied.

The shadow was standing where she had done, its form vague and its eyes yellow in the shapeless darkness.

Then it spoke.

_“Hello, Rum.”_

It was the first time that the shadow had spoken. Before, when the entity had spoken, it had always been through Belle, and no matter how unlike her the voice had been, it had always been shaped by her. There had always been something of Belle in the back of it.

This was something unknown, and horrible.

_“It’s been a long time, but now I’m finally back where I belong.”_

The shape was flickering, changing before his eyes, solidifying into something that was definitely a human shape. As Gold watched, the yellow eyes became black in a pale female face, a face that was definitely not Belle’s and that yet looked familiar nonetheless.

Even with so many centuries having passed, Gold realised with a jolt that it was familial resemblance.

“Nimue?”

 _“She was the first, certainly.”_  The entity began to change again, morphing through myriad different faces and forms and never keeping the same one for longer than a few seconds.  _“I have taken many other forms since her. But there’s one that I have yet to take. Your aunts denied me for so long.”_

Gold found himself staring at his father’s face, soulless eyes staring back at him, and as the form began to shift again, he knew what he was about to see. It was like something out of a nightmare, wanting to look away but knowing that it would be pointless, and knowing that, like in a horror film, the best way to keep the evil at bay was to keep looking at it for as long as physically possible, lest it creep up.

It was like looking into a mirror, but the image was distorted. There was evil in his features as the entity showed them, a gleeful smile that Gold knew he was not wearing himself. The eyes were like pitch, and the skin was grey and sickly. Was he looking at his own destiny? Is this what would have happened had his father succeeded in his plan to pass on the entity before its time?

 _“It feels good to be back where I truly belong,”_  the entity said.  _“She served her purpose, and now I’m back with you. Back with your bloodline, where I’ll stay.”_

“Not if I have anything to say about it.”

Gold raised the sword again, but before he could swing it, the entity had darted forward, plunging two semi-spectral hands into his chest.

He could feel the darkness spreading throughout his veins and as it began to cloud his mind, Gold screamed.


	48. Chapter 48

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Please note:** Gold is being possessed by the entity at various points throughout this chapter.
> 
> **Content warning for this chapter:** mild gore.

Her hand hurt, and someone was screaming. Those were the two things that Belle became aware of first.

Then she realised that she was outside, when she was very sure that two minutes ago she had been in a bookshop.

Finally, she realised that she was lying down with her head in someone’s lap, and that person was not the someone who was screaming.

As Belle opened her eyes and looked up at the bright full moon and the stars above her, she came to a more monumental realisation.

The entity was gone.

The thing that had been at the back of her mind, just being insidiously  _there_  for as long as she could remember, was gone. She had become so used to it being a part of her that she had long since learned not to take any notice of its presence, which was what made its absence so very pronounced and obvious.

It had worked. Whatever Gold and Joseph had done to get the entity out of her, it had worked.

The scream was still ringing in her ears, and it made her blood run cold. It might have worked, but at what cost?

Ignoring the pain in her hand, Belle struggled into a sitting position, and she heard Joseph’s voice telling her to relax, that she was all right. The absence of the entity was making her feel light-headed, literally, unable to comprehend and get used to not having to share her mind space with someone else. Joseph’s arm around her was a welcome grounding and support, and she glanced down at her hand to see spots of blood seeping through a handkerchief.

“You’re ok,” Joseph was saying. “We had to spill blood to get the entity out, but it’s just a shallow cut, you’ll be fine.”

Belle wasn’t worried about her hand; she knew that it would heal. She was more worried about the screaming, and what had happened to the entity if it was no longer within her.

“What happened?” she asked. “Where’s Rum?”

She followed Joseph’s sight line, and it was in that moment that she really took in all of her surroundings. They were in the middle of the standing stones where so many of her nightmares had taken place, and there was Gold, not too far away from them. He was on his hands and knees, shaking, and Belle knew what had happened. The moonlight glinted off the sword that had no doubt fallen from his hand and was lying innocently on the damp grass in front of him, and Belle felt her heart begin to race.

“No,” she mumbled. “No, no, this can’t be happening. It can’t end like this.”

She scrabbled out of Joseph’s arms and moved a few steps towards Gold. Despite everything, she still couldn’t help hanging back out of fear. The memories of her own experiences with the Dark One were still all too fresh in her mind, and she remembered the terrible fear she’d always had that she would one day hurt Gold or Joseph. She knew that Gold would never forgive himself if he hurt her whilst in this state, and she wanted to keep herself out of harm’s way as much as she wanted to help him.

There again, though, perhaps she wasn’t in harm’s way anymore. The entity had what it wanted; it was back with the bloodline that it had been separated from and it was back with its one true host. Now the challenge would be banishing it from that host and back into the ether that it had first sprung from.

“Rum?” Belle said softly, getting onto her knees in front of him. “Rum? I know you’re in there somewhere.”

He looked up at her, and Belle startled backwards on seeing his eyes full and soulless black. If this was what her father and Rum had seen when the entity had taken over her completely, she could well understand why they had been so unnerved by it.

She steeled herself. She had been able to fight the entity and push it out, even if she had not been able to banish it fully. Surely Gold would be able to do the same. She knew that he had the strength in him.

“Rum, please, you’ve got to fight this.”

The entity didn’t move or speak, it was just staring at her, unblinking. Perhaps talking to Gold wasn’t going to be the best option just yet. Maybe she needed to speak to the entity directly. Before, whenever they had asked it about its motives, they were always the same. It wanted to reunite with its original bloodline. Now that it was there, what was it going to do next?

“What do you want?” she asked, trying to sound imperious and failing due to the unavoidable quaver in her voice.

The entity gave a low, evil laugh, so unlike Gold’s normal voice.

“I want what I’ve always wanted. To bring the chaos of the world that I came from into this world where I’m free.”

Belle shivered. That really wasn’t what she’d had in mind. It really didn’t look like they were going to get through this to a nice peaceful resolution like she’d hoped they might. Up until now a part of her had entertained the forlorn hope that maybe it was all a huge misunderstanding and once they were back in Scotland at the standing stones, they would be able to set it all right.

That wasn’t going to be an option.

Blood was going to have to be spilled, she knew that much. Nimue had spilled blood on the ground here to summon the entity in the first place and Rum would have to spill blood to get it out of him.

There had to be more to it than that. If it was just a case of spilling blood, then surely someone would have found that out and done it years ago to get rid of the entity.

Or perhaps, the entity had had enough control over them to stop them doing it.

Belle looked over at Joseph, who was looking frantically around the standing stones, trying to gauge the distances between them.

“Joseph!” she yelled. “Joseph, what do we do now?”

“Belle…”

It was Gold’s voice, his normal voice, and Belle turned back to him. His eyes were back to their usual chocolate brown, and she heaved a sigh of relief, throwing her arms around him.

“Oh Rum…”

“No, Belle, we don’t have much time. It’s still in here, I can’t hold it off much longer. It’s all I can do to talk to you now.”

“You’ve got to fight it, Rum, I know that you can do it, I know that you’ve got it in you!”

“I’m trying, Belle, I really am.” He reached out towards the sword and Belle grabbed it.

“It has to be me,” he said.

“What has to be you?”

“The blood… I have to spill my own.”

Belle made to press the sword into his outstretched hand, but he pushed her away roughly, and as he stood, Belle saw his eyes darken into the full black that they had been before when the entity had taken complete control.

“Joseph, we have to do something!” she yelled.

Joseph ran over to her with a stick which he shoved into the ground at her feet.

“What the hell is that for?”

“This is the exact centre of the circle,” he said. “This is where the blood needs to be spilled. I thought that it was too easy, just spilling blood to get the entity out. Even if it has to be with this exact sword, it has to be in this exact spot.”

Above them, the entity laughed, high and cruel.

“I wondered how long it was going to take you to figure that out,” it said. “Yes, the circumstances for my summoning were rather specific. I don’t really think that Nimue even intended to do what she did. She certainly didn’t know what she unleashed when I came out of my prison to do her bidding.”

“Joseph, we need to do something!”

“I know! I’m trying to think!”

The blood had to be spilled at Gold’s own hand, which would be hard enough in itself now that the entity had taken over. And it had to be spilled in this exact spot in order for the banishment to take place.

Belle readjusted her grip on the sword handle, looking at the blade and the crimson stain of her own blood on it, then she looked across at the stick that marked the centre of the circle.

“I have an idea.”

She stood up, hefting the heavy sword up and resting it against her shoulder.

“You can’t escape, you know,” the entity said as she moved away, towards the edge of the circle. “I think that you’ll be the one I destroy first.”

“Oh, I’m counting on it,” Belle muttered. She stopped at the edge of the circle, looking over towards Joseph, who quite clearly thought that she was mad.

_Grab him_ , she mouthed. Joseph understood and nodded his assent, quietly moving behind the entity as it stalked across the circle towards her. Belle took a deep breath and loosened her grip on the sword a little. She would only have a few seconds in which to act, and since she’d only thought up this plan on the spur of the moment, she had no idea how it was going to work. All she knew was that she had to try.

The entity reached her then, its expression leering and so unlike the man whose face it wore.

“Do you really think I won’t hurt you because I’ll bend to his feelings?” the entity asked. “No, I think it’ll be a lovely surprise for him when I retreat back into the farthest corners of his mind and he wakes up to your blood on his hands.”

Belle scoffed. “You can’t rain down destruction on the world when your host’s in jail for murder,” she said.

“Oh, believe me, now that I’m reconnected to the original bloodline, I can rain down destruction from anywhere. You were strong, and Rum is strong too, but he’s at a disadvantage. I have the power of all of those who came before me and share his blood. You were unique. One of a kind. It’s such a shame to destroy you now.”

As horrible as it was to hear the words, Belle let the thing speak. The longer it talked, the longer she had to enact her plan.

“Rum,” she said slowly. “Rum, I know you’re in there. I know you’re fighting. Fight for me now. Fight for me and for Joseph. I know you’re in there.”

She had no idea if he could hear her or not. She knew that she had never been able to hear anything when the entity had possessed her in the past, but as the thing itself had said, there was a difference in their circumstances.

“Help me Belle, please!”

Gold was back, for however short a period, and Belle nodded to Joseph over his shoulder.

Joseph grabbed Gold, clamping his skinny arms around the other man to keep him from lashing out if the entity took hold again unexpectedly, and Belle took his hands, pressing the hilt of the blade into one and curling her own hand over his tightly.

She looked up at Gold, who nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “I can’t do it on my own, it’s too powerful.”

He hadn’t had years to learn subconsciously how to fight it like Belle had. He’d only had a couple of minutes, and he was doing the best he could, but time was running out. They couldn’t afford to let the entity out of the circle.

Belle grabbed his other hand and opened the palm.

“NO!” The entity was back, and thrashing against Joseph’s hold on it, nearly sending him flying. The end of the blade caught Belle’s cheek and she gasped at the sharp pain, but she didn’t let go.

“You can’t do this!” the entity roared. “You can’t!”

Fighting against its flailing, Belle brought the sword down on Gold’s palm, seeing dark scarlet well up around the blade immediately.

He stopped fighting then, and Joseph caught him as he sagged backwards. The entity was appearing again, not in the shadow form that Gold and Joseph had described to her, but something more physical.

It looked like Gold, but not really. It looked like Gold if Gold had had all the humanity and emotion sucked out of him, leaving him with just a shell and desire for destruction.

“No!” it snarled, lunging towards Belle, who held the sword up in an effort to repel it.

“Don’t you dare touch her!”

Gold was back on his feet, and the entity turned to him.

“Oh really? Would you willingly let me back in to save her?”

“No. We’re sending you back where you belong. You can’t survive without a host, not for long. If you could, you wouldn’t still be here. You’d be off creating destruction, free from a bloodline forever. No, you need me, more than you like to admit.”

Enraged, the entity rushed at Gold grabbing him by the front of his shirt and throwing him against one of the stones. Belle gasped at the heavy crack as his head made contact, but she couldn’t stop now, not when she had the sword and the precious blood that they needed was dripping off it.

She tore her gaze away from the others and ran over to the stick that marked the centre point, placing the tip of the sword against the hard earth.

“Joseph, help me!”

Petrified as he was, Joseph nonetheless obeyed, coming over and grabbing the hilt of the sword with her. Together they drove it down into the ground, watching as the blood seeped away.

“NO!”

The entity was fading, becoming a phantom of smoke and shadow, sucked back towards the sword, sucked back into the earth, into whatever prison of darkness and timelessness that it had first been summoned from all those centuries ago.

There was an ear-splitting crack of thunder and a pulse of light shot out from the ground, travelling up the sword; Belle and Joseph scrabbled backwards before it hit their hands at the top.

Then everything was still, and everything was quiet.

“Rum!”

Belle ran over to him, slumped at the bottom of the stone the entity had thrown him against. He wasn’t responsive, and her hand came away sticky with blood when she touched the back of his head.

“Joseph, call an ambulance!”

“Already on it.”

She felt for a pulse; it was there, but it was weak, and she looked down at the cut on his hand, deeper than the one on her own and still oozing dark red blood.

“Come on, Rum,” she said. “You can do this. You can pull through this. I love you.”

She looked over at the sword as the lights from the ambulance began to pierce the night sky. It was clean, free from markings, free from names, just standing there upright in the earth as if it had always been meant to be there. Perhaps it had, the key to the prison that the entity had been returned to.

It was all over. The entity was banished.

But at what cost?


	49. Chapter 49

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for this chapter: medical terminology and mild gore

Belle hugged her knees, resting her head on them and looking down at the professional dressing that now adorned her cut palm. Joseph’s arm was steady and solid around her shoulders, and she leaned into his side, grateful for the support he offered her even though he was barely holding it together himself. She could feel him shaking, and she wished that she could offer him some comfort, but she had none to give.

It had been a fraught time after the entity had been banished. The ambulance and police had arrived after Joseph’s frantic call to them, but it had been hard to explain the precise nature of what had happened. How could they? No self-respecting police officer or paramedic was going to accept a tale of malevolent demons and possession. Still, they had given their statements and explained as best they could without implicating themselves, and they had been left alone. The police had finished and left the hospital. Belle wondered if they were going to investigate any further or if they were going to chalk this one up to experience and leave the case unsolved.

The fact that they had been at the standing stones probably excused them a little. All sorts of things happened at standing stones and other such places that could not be explained.

Gold was still out of it. They had whisked him away for scans and x-rays and in all the hustle and bustle of the hospital, it felt that no-one was able to tell them anything about what was going on and what state he might be in. They had heard words about head injuries and brain damage and various other terrifying diagnoses, and Belle had resolved to shut out all of the voices until one arrived that would tell her what she wanted to hear.

“He’s going to be all right,” Joseph said. “They would have told us by now if he wasn’t going to be.”

They were sitting alone in the accident and emergency unit in a waiting room assigned for friends and family of the critically ill patients received by ambulance. Belle was certain that they had been put in here and forgotten about, but something stopped her from leaving the room and going to find a nurse for an update. Part of her knew that it was because if someone stopped to explain everything to her, then she was keeping them away from making Gold better. Another part accepted that it was because she didn’t want to hear the worst. As long as she didn’t know what was happening, she could kid herself that everything was going to be all right.

“What are we going to do, Joseph?” she asked.

She had no answer for herself, and it didn’t feel like Joseph had one either. Just a few short hours ago, when she had first woken in the stone circle and had felt that the entity was gone once and for all, she had thought of her life stretching ahead of her, so full of promise. There was nothing that she couldn’t do now. She was free. She could go after anything that she wanted.

But she didn’t want to do it alone.

Joseph and Gold had got her through so much over these past couple of months, and she didn’t want to continue her journey through life without them. She had been worried about her feelings and the way that they had developed, but now that she was free and she knew that she had full control over herself, she found that they had not changed. She was in love with Gold, and she was very nearly in love with Joseph, and she couldn’t bear it if she didn’t have one of them, or both of them, in her life anymore. They had all come through so much together, and there was no-one else on earth who would be able to share her experiences in the way that they could.

Instead of dampening her feelings as she feared it would, banishing the entity had just caused them to intensify.

“First of all, we’re going to get through this,” Joseph said. “Then we’re going to work out what happens next once Gold is awake and with it once more. It wouldn’t be fair to start making plans without him.”

“I know, and I don’t want to think about being without him at all.”

“We won’t be. He’ll be up and about and annoying us before you know it.”

Belle managed a weak laugh. “I hope you’re right.”

“You love him, don’t you?” Joseph said eventually.

Belle nodded.

“I do. I don’t think I realised just how deep my feelings went until I saw him lying there and I realised that I never wanted to be without him.” She turned to look at him. “That doesn’t mean that I don’t want you as well. Someone once told me that I love deeply and passionately, and that I would love like this twice in my lifetime. There’s nothing to say that I can’t love two people simultaneously. I mean, if you would be all right with that. What I feel for the both of you, well, neither one of you diminishes the other in any way. I know that we talked about it just before you left to come back here. What I said then still stands. I want to be with you both.” She shook her head. “Maybe this isn’t the right time and place to be talking about it. There’s so much still up in the air. I’m not going to stop worrying until I see Rum with my own eyes and I know that he’s ok.”

Joseph nodded. “I can appreciate that. No matter what happens, or has happened, or will happen, he’s always been a good friend to me and I couldn’t bear to lose him. I couldn’t bear to lose you, either. This has been a nerve-wracking evening. I’m so glad that you’re all right, Belle. I can’t even begin to describe it, the feeling when I thought I’d lost both of you. The entity had gone into Gold, and you were unconscious, and I was so powerless to help either of you.”

His voice caught in his throat and he buried his face in her shoulder. Belle nudged her head against his and they stayed there, curled up, as if making themselves smaller would somehow prevent anything tragic happening to them, as if fate wouldn’t see them and would spare them that pain. It wasn’t just her relationship with the two of them that she had to think about, it was their friendship with each other. They had gone through a lot together, both during this particular adventure and throughout all of the ones that had come before. If she was going to successfully negotiate her feelings towards two very different men, then perhaps she would have the most luck with two who seemed to know each other better than she knew either of them.

“Miss French? Mr Macavoy?”

A nurse had come into the waiting room, and she came over and sat down opposite them.

“We’re taking Mr Gold up to the intensive care unit now. The scans have shown that there’s no damage to his brain despite the head trauma, which was what we were most worried about. He also has a few broken ribs which have caused a collapsed lung, but we’ve inserted a chest drain to clear the blood and air out of his chest so that his lung can re-inflate. We’ll need to monitor his progress and scan his brain again in another few hours, but for now, things are looking good. We just need to be patient and wait for him to wake up in his own time.”

Relief flooded through Belle’s veins and she unfolded herself out of her chair, going over to the nurse and throwing her arms around her.

“Thank you, thank you so much.”

“You’re very welcome. If you follow me, I’ll take you through to the ICU waiting area; the doctors there will tell you when they’re ready for you to see him.”

They were only swapping one bleak waiting room for another, but any progress was good progress, and now that they had good news, the idea of waiting around for a while longer did not seem as daunting.

Belle checked her watch. It was three o’clock in the morning and her body was telling her that she really ought to be in bed, both jetlag and the terrifying events of the day conspiring to catch up with her and try to make her sleep. The adrenaline rush from the fight with the entity at the stones had worn off now, and the nervous energy from worrying about Gold was beginning to dissipate as well. 

It was the first time Belle could remember that she was actually looking forward to going to bed and being able to sleep. For the first time, she knew that nothing was going to happen, and that wherever she laid her head down, she would still be in the same place when she woke up. She had never before had that same sense of security; she had been sleepwalking for as long as she could remember, even before she had linked it to the entity, and she gave a sob of relief. Soon the floodgates were open, and she was crying unashamedly, bawling into her hands.

“Belle?” Joseph was alarmed by her sudden outpouring. “Belle, what’s wrong? Apart from everything with our current situation.”

Belle shook her head, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand.

“No, no, it’s not that,” she said. “I mean, obviously I am worried about Rum, but these tears aren’t for him. It’s really just hit home that it’s gone. It’s all over. I’m free. For the first time in my life I don’t have to worry about this thing. I don’t need to fear that it’s going to hurt someone I love anymore. It’s gone. I’m free. I’m really free at last.”

It was such a momentous revelation that she couldn’t get over it. It hadn’t occurred to her before with all the other worries that had been stacking up on her, but now the full ramifications of the banishment were finally dawning on her. Her life was her own again, truly.

Joseph just held her as she continued to cry, a lifetime’s worth of relief and catharsis finally coming to the fore. A doctor tapped on the door and put his head around, but quietly backed out without saying anything when he saw the scene within. Belle could quite forgive him for thinking that she was crying out of sadness and grief. In a way she knew that she was, although the overriding emotion was one of gladness that it was all over for her.

Gradually she quietened, and Joseph fished around in his pocket for a handkerchief.

“I used it on your hand,” he said, grabbing the box of tissues from the table in the waiting room. “Here.”

“Thanks, Joseph. Thank you so much for everything. What would I have done without you?”

Joseph laughed. “Oh, I’m sure that the two of you would have got by.”

Belle wasn’t as convinced, and she knew that deep down, Joseph wasn’t either. It had taken the combination of all three of them to defeat the entity, and if that wasn’t a sign that they ought to stick together, then she didn’t know what was.

The doctor came back a few minutes later.

“You can go in and see him now,” he said. “The tubes and wires might make everything look rather dire, but we’re very confident for his recovery. We’re keeping him here in intensive care until he wakes up, so that we can keep monitoring him more closely. Once we’re sure that he’s fully conscious and stable, he’ll be moved to a lower risk ward to continue his recovery. Whatever happened, he’s had a very lucky escape.”

“We all have,” Joseph muttered.

They followed the doctor through to the ward and slipped behind the curtains that had been pulled around Gold’s bed. He looked rather small and frail there in the with all the tubes snaking in and out of him and all the monitors humming and beeping. Belle stroked his hair, still damp where the nurses had cleaned the blood away from his head wound to stitch him up.

“I’ll leave you alone. The intensive care unit operates round the clock visiting hours, so you can stay as long as you like.”

Belle sat down in the chair beside the bed, taking one of Gold’s hands, and Joseph took the other side.

Neither of them were going anywhere.


	50. Chapter 50

He wasn’t dead. He could hear hospital monitors beeping and his chest felt like a dinosaur was sitting on it, so Gold was fairly sure that he wasn’t dead. His eyelids were very heavy, and it took a while to get them open, but when he did so, his suspicions were confirmed.

He wasn’t dead. He was in hospital.

“Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty.”

He looked over to his left to see Joseph sitting beside him. He looked like he’d been through hell and back, and for all Gold knew, he might have done. He tried to move, but the dinosaur sitting on his chest had other ideas, so he just lay back against the pillow with a groan.

“Take it easy,” Joseph said. He leaned over and pressed the button to call the nurse. “You’ve got a lot of broken ribs and bruised bits.”

“I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck,” Gold muttered. His voice was weak and barely there, and he grimaced. “How long… Where’s Belle… What happened…?”

“Easy, easy,” Joseph said. “Don’t get yourself overexcited or all the monitors are going to go haywire and they’ll kick me out. To answer your questions, you’ve been asleep for a little over eighteen hours. Belle is getting some coffee. We’ve been here with you the entire time. Well, we did take turns to go back to the hotel and shower, but at least one of us has been with you the entire time.”

The nurse arrived at this point and the conversation broke off by necessity as she performed all the tasks she needed to, before expressing her happiness at seeing him awake at last and going off to inform the doctor in charge of the ward that Gold had woken up.

He turned back to Joseph, who had since resumed his seat beside the bed.

“Is Belle…?”

“She’s fine. She’s absolutely fine, thanks to you.”

“I cut her face,” Gold whispered. “When the entity was fighting for control, the sword… it caught her face.”

“It wasn’t too deep,” Joseph said. “They closed it with steri-strips. She’ll be fine. They don’t even think that it’ll leave a scar. She needed ten stitches in her palm, but that’ll heal well. Yours is worse, you needed twenty and they were worried you might have nerve damage.”

Gold held up his hand, which felt as heavy as a bowling ball, and flexed his fingers. It hurt like hell and he grimaced.

“Nope, I think the nerves are fine.”

“Well, we’ll get the professional’s opinion before we pronounce you to be fine.”

“What happened?” Gold pressed. “What about the entity? Where did it go?”

He could feel that it wasn’t still within him anymore. Although he didn’t think that he would ever know exactly what Belle was describing when she had talked about something sharing her mind, he knew what it felt like now, and he couldn’t feel it anymore. The entity had left him, and it had left Belle, so where on earth had it gone instead?

“It’s gone back where it came from. It’s locked away safe beyond time and light, and we don’t need to worry about it again.”

Gold closed his eyes with a sigh of relief. It was all over at last. To think that this had all begun when he had overheard a chance remark in a bar one evening all those weeks ago, when he had first met Belle and taken on her case. He had certainly never thought that it would come this far, into something that spanned continents and centuries and that tied in so deeply with his own family.

Now they could all get on with the business of living, and for Belle, it would be the first time that she could freely do so without fear of what the entity might do.

He wondered what she was going to do with her newly gained freedom.

Gold was pulled from his thoughts by the appearance of Belle herself in the doorway to the ward, holding two takeaway cups of coffee. She broke into a wide smile when she saw that he was awake, coming over and handing the coffees to Joseph before putting her arms around him gently and kissing his cheek.

“I knew you’d make it,” she said.

“Yes, it’ll take more than a centuries old entity to stop me,” he said. Belle just rolled her eyes.

“You know what I mean. I’m so glad that you’re ok. I really did think that I’d lost you for a moment there, and I don’t know what I would have done if that had happened.”

She took the seat on the other side of the bed, opposite Joseph, and she took Gold’s hand.

“I never want to lose you,” she said. “No matter what happens. I have a future now, one that a few weeks ago I thought I might never get the chance to see, and I want you to be part of it.” She glanced at Joseph. “I want both of you to be part of it.”

Well, that certainly told Gold what Belle was going to do with her newly gained freedom. He smiled, but before they could talk any more on the subject, the doctor was coming over, adjusting his pain medication, telling him about the next steps for his recovery. Gold let it all wash over him, and by the time the doctor had finished explaining everything, he was just about ready to go back to sleep again. There was nothing to worry about.

Whatever happened, he and Belle were going to be together, and there was nothing that could keep them apart.

X

Gold’s strength continued to improve over the next couple of days and once the final scans had been done to confirm that he had suffered no lasting damage from his head injury, he was more than ready to be discharged and continue his recovery in the comfort of his own home. Of course, doing that meant that he had to endure a long haul flight with broken ribs, which wasn’t going to be quite so comfortable.

Having moved off the intensive care unit into a regular ward, the visiting hours were more limited, and Gold found himself wondering what Joseph and Belle were getting up to when they weren’t sitting with him and stopping him from venting his frustration on his current predicament on the innocent nurses.

It was strange to think of them pursuing a relationship out there beyond the bounds of the hospital, but ultimately Gold found that his feelings were not really those of jealousy in the sense that he wanted to keep Belle to himself. It was more jealousy in that he wanted to be out there with them, exploring this thing that existed between the three of them as a trio. After everything that he and Belle had been through, he was confident in the seriousness of her feelings for him.

Before he might have been worried about Belle turning her affections towards Joseph once the entity was banished, and before they had made the journey to Scotland, he had half-expected to hear that she was leaving him for his much safer friend. Now it was all said and done, and Belle was still here, still more than ready to continue her relationship with him. If they could survive that, then they could survive just about anything, including, hopefully, the addition of Joseph.

If it was going to be anyone, then Gold was glad that it was Joseph, a friend whom he knew and trusted and whom Belle trusted deeply as well. It wasn’t bringing in a stranger, it was bringing in a friend who was in need of just as much love and support as he and Belle were.

He lay back against the pillows, staring up at the ceiling, and he thought about the future. It could work, the three of them. There was just one huge problem sitting there staring them in the face that they had yet to talk about, namely the fact that very soon, there would once more be an ocean between him and Belle and Joseph over on the other side of the Atlantic.

Did there have to be, though?

Gold furrowed his brow, pretty sure that it was the morphine talking, but the more that he thought about it, the more that it started to make sense. He and Belle’s lives were firmly established in America, they had links and friends there that they did not want to lose. Whilst Joseph was Scottish and the UK had always been his base of operations, he didn’t seem to have as many close ties to it; no family, and from what he could tell from their conversations, few friends. Whilst he had still been in the priesthood, he had travelled around extensively to perform his work; nowhere was really a home to him.

Gold sighed. He really couldn’t ask Joseph to give up the life that he had over here and come to America to be with him and Belle; there wasn’t really a way to broach the subject that didn’t make it seem like Gold was looking down on Joseph’s current way of life and intimating that coming to America would be better for him.

Whatever happened, it was something that he was going to have to discuss with Belle. She was the centre of their relationship after all, and it wouldn’t do to start making any kinds of plans without her input. Especially not when he was under the influence of strong painkillers.

Visiting hours rolled around and sure enough, Belle came in, giving him a bright smile and sitting down beside him.

“Joseph will be here later,” she said. “He had some things to do in town, finishing up. I think he’s gone to see Anton to reassure him that the apocalypse has been averted.”

Gold laughed, then stopped when it hurt his bruised ribs, glaring down at his battered body.

“The sooner I get out of here, the better,” he muttered.

“I’m sure that the nurses agree with you,” Belle said sweetly. He glared at her, but she just laughed, and Gold returned to his previous train of thought.

“I’ve had an idea,” he said. “About Joseph.”

“Yes?” Belle pulled her chair a little closer to the bed. “I mean, I know that what we have isn’t exactly what’s considered normal, but I like to think that we can make it work, somehow.”

Gold nodded. “I do too. There’s just the small problem of distance.”

“Yeah, that was the stumbling block that Joseph and I had come to as well. I suppose… No, that’s stupid.”

“What?”

“I was wondering if Joseph might like to come to Storybrooke,” Belle said. “I know he’s been to visit, but he wasn’t really there for very long and we didn’t really have all that much chance to discuss us, our relationship. There were other more important things at hand. But Joseph’s been talking about having a fresh start now that all this is over. He wants to stay off the wagon, and I want to help him. He needs support.” She paused. “I think we’re all going to need support after that experience.” She shivered at the memory of what had happened at the standing stones. “What was your thought?”

“Very much along the same lines as yours,” Gold admitted. “I think it’s got potential. I just don’t want Joseph to think that we’re organising his life for him, and it’s a big commitment to make if you’re not absolutely sure that it’s going to work.”

“I guess that the only thing we can do is ask him,” Belle said. “It’s not like we’d be taking him back with us immediately,” she continued. “Right now you need to focus on getting well and it’s going to be a while before you’re back to full strength. That should probably be done without any extra stress. We have a while to work out how everything’s going to work.”

“Yes. We’ll make it work.”

They had come so close to losing, and Gold knew that having stared certain doom in the face, he was determined to make the absolute most of the future that he had. Belle was, too, and he was pretty sure that Joseph, despite never having been in quite as much danger as they had been, was of the same mind.

Belle took his injured hand, pressing a light kiss to the bandage, and they just made small talk until Joseph arrived about an hour later. He stopped short as he approached them, raising an eyebrow.

“You two are looking very conspiratorial,” he said. “Should I be worried?”

Belle shook her head.

“No. I don’t think so. We were talking about the future, about what happens once Rum and I go back to Storybrooke.”

Joseph’s expression was calm and measured, but it was clear from his eyes that there was turmoil beneath the surface.

“Yes?” he said, pulling up the other chair beside Gold’s bed.

“We were wondering if you would like to come to Storybrooke on a more permanent basis,” Belle said. “Not straight away, of course, there’s so much to sort out. But you said yourself that you were looking for a fresh start. If you want that fresh start with us, then…”

Joseph nodded. “I would like that,” he said. “But it’s such a huge step.”

“We’ll work it out,” Belle said. “We have time. We have all the time in the world now.”

That was true, no matter what. Nothing was encroaching in on them anymore. The entity was gone, and was no longer the ticking time bomb waiting to cause harm to one or all of them. They weren’t fighting against anything any longer. They could make this work at their own pace, rather than that of outside forces.

Joseph nodded again. “I think it might work. It’s not like I’m living the dream over here.”

Belle’s smile was radiant, and infectious, with both Gold and Joseph returning it. They could make it work. They had enough time to sort things out.


	51. Chapter 51

Packing up his flat did not give Joseph the sense of nostalgia that he thought it was going to. For a long time he had been dreading this final moment of leaving his old life behind in favour of a new one. There was so much that could go wrong. He was uprooting his entire life and moving to a new country, an entirely new life, and he knew that if this thing between him, Belle and Gold went wrong at any point then he was the one who had the most to lose from it.

At the same time though, he realised as he began folding his clothes into his suitcases, he was also the one who had the most to gain. They were all beginning a new stage of their lives with this relationship, and for Joseph, a change of scene and a change of pace were long overdue.

He thought of the state that he had been in before Gold had brought this case to his attention and before he had met Belle and she had begun to improve his life without even realising it. He really didn’t want to go back to the place he had been in then, and even if this thing didn’t work out between them, he would be forever grateful that they had given him the incentive to move on with his life.

Whatever happened, this was a new opportunity for him and a new experience, and after everything that Joseph had been through in his life and career, it was one that he desperately needed.

He looked around the practically empty bedroom. All of his books and papers had already been packed up and shipped off to Maine, and Belle had called him excitedly when she had received them, eagerly wanting to start reading all of them. As much as he wanted to be there when she read them, to give her that extra eyewitness account that would make all his notebooks much more interesting, he had given her his blessing to dive straight in. It would be strange finding homes for everything in a new place. This particular flat didn’t have many good memories in it and when he searched his feelings he knew that he didn’t really feel too much loss about leaving it.

He was still worried though. Joseph didn’t think that he was ever not going to be worried; it was his natural state of mind for the most part. It was blind fear that had got him through the last few weeks of the case, coupled with the fierce desire not to let Belle down.  

He had been worried throughout these last couple of months since Belle and Gold had gone back to Storybrooke, scared that having made this commitment they would turn around and say that they didn’t want him to come after all, but there had been no intimation of that at all. Belle talked to him on Skype almost every day, and Joseph blushed at the nature that some of their calls had taken in recent days.

They had slept together once, whilst Gold had still been recovering in the hospital. It had not been the most successful of encounters; Joseph was inexperienced as it was and even more nervous with a brand new partner considering the last time he’d had sex had been whilst he’d still been in the seminary before he’d taken his vows. They were both emotional and worried about Gold, and it had been cathartic more than it had been pleasurable, just satisfying the need to be close to someone in the wake of all the upheaval that they had been through and all the uncertainty that they were still living in. Although it had been somewhat awkward at the time, it had not been awkward in the morning after, with no regrets on either of their parts and the unspoken promise that not only would there be a next time, that the next time would definitely be better.

And now it was almost time for this new part of his life to begin. Everything was packed up and ready to be shipped over if it had not already been, and now he was ready to leave himself. Although he did feel sad to be leaving a place where he had been born and where he had spent so much time, he recognised that the time spent there had not necessarily been the best time. He had always been at his happiest when he had been working and travelling, so there was no reason to think that some of that happiness could not be regained now, in a new place with new people and old friends.

When he arrived at Boston, it was with a much lighter heart than the last time he had been there, and walking into the arrivals hall he was immediately greeted by Belle running up and throwing her arms around him, planting a huge kiss on him in full view of the rest of the airport. Joseph smiled against her mouth, and he knew that he had made the right choice to come over.

“I missed you,” she said simply, taking his hand and walking back over to where Gold was waiting for them at the back of the arrivals hall.

“I missed you too. I even missed Gold, although he probably won’t believe me.”

Gold just raised an eyebrow before giving in to mirth and snorting. “It’s good to see you again, Joseph.”

“I’m very glad to see you in one piece, I must say. How are you?”

“Well, as long as Belle doesn’t start throwing herself at me in such an exuberant fashion as was just demonstrated, I should be fine. All the stitches are out and the breaks have healed. Still tender, though.”

“That’s good to hear. I think that when it comes down to it, Belle and I got off lightly.”

Gold didn’t respond, and Joseph knew what he was thinking. If it had spared Belle’s suffering, then he really didn’t mind having been the one to take the brunt of the entity’s punishment.

They left the airport, making their way to where Gold was parked, and Joseph collapsed into the back. Belle glanced at him over her shoulder and in spite of the tiredness engendered by the long haul flight, he couldn’t help but return the enthusiasm in her face. This was going to be the beginning of something good.

X

Joseph checked into the inn, dumping his bags in there and lying back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling and allowing himself a huge grin. So far, everything was going very well, and he couldn’t be happier.

They had decided that it would be premature for them all to move in together at this early stage, and Joseph had opted to stay in the inn until he could find a small place of his own to rent in the town. Gold had lived there long enough to know the right people to go to in order to get good quality accommodation for a reasonable price. Belle was still staying in her apartment above the library, which was fully opened and flourishing without the fear of its librarian being struck down by some mysterious affliction as had happened in the past. She had been storing all of his shipped belongings in the library basement, and he was very much looking forward to reuniting with them.

Still, Joseph got the impression that they would still end up in Gold’s house more often than not. He certainly had the most room, and with a couple of spare bedrooms, there was room for all sorts of sleeping arrangements, however they might want to manage it. He had invited them both over for dinner to celebrate Joseph’s arrival in the town and the beginning of this new stage of his life, and Joseph found himself wondering what, if anything, that might lead to.

Belle had said that she was open to all three of them being together at the same time, but Joseph wasn’t quite sure that he was ready for such a step just yet. In the future, maybe, but he was going to need a bit of practice to save face in front of Gold, who, whatever his own skills in that area might be, was definitely going to be better than Joseph.

He shook himself. This was a positive occasion, and worries about his performance would simply have to wait. For now, he was tired from the long haul flight and wanted to get a nap in before dinner in case he nodded off at the table, which, whilst amusing for everybody else, would certainly be mortifying to him.

He woke refreshed a couple of hours later to the sound of someone tapping on his door, and he went over to answer it. Belle was standing there with an armful of books that he recognised as his own.

“I know that you’ll only have to move them all in a few days once you have somewhere permanent to live, but I thought that you would want to be reunited with some of your things. It would make you feel more at home.”

Joseph took the stack of books from her.

“Are these all the ones you’ve read?”

“Only some of them!” Belle protested. “They’re really interesting, but they’ve made me even more determined not to have any more adventures with the supernatural.” She paused, and Joseph invited her into the room, gesturing for her to sit down on the bed beside him.

“Have you decided what you’re going to do now?” Belle asked. “Obviously I have the library and Gold’s writing.”

Joseph smiled. He and Gold had been talking about collaborating on something for the last couple of months, and now that he was here they could get started on it. Joseph had more than enough material to transform it into something of a memoir, but he feared the Vatican suppressing publication if he were actually putting pen to paper, so they had decided that fiction was the way to go. Nobody needed to know that they were actually drawing on real life things that they had experienced over the course of their careers, both individually and on the cases that they had investigated together.

“I’ve got some ideas.”

“I’m glad. I know it’s a big thing, uprooting your entire life and moving over here for us, for me. It means so much to me, it really does.”

“Well, if I’m going to make a fresh start anywhere, then it might as well be here where I have people who care about me,” Joseph said. “I don’t think that it would have been good for me to stay where I was anyway. I’ve missed you so much these last couple of months, Belle, and I don’t think that I could have got by for much longer with only Skype for company. Now that I’m really here, and really able to, well, you know…”

Belle just grinned; she knew exactly what he meant and she leaned in to press a soft kiss against his lips. Joseph chanced to pull her in closer, slipping his arms around her waist, and Belle was eager to agree, her hands carding into his hair. He closed his eyes, scarcely able to believe that after everything, he was here, and Belle was here, and they were able to do this and that Belle’s relationship with Gold and his own friendship with Gold hadn’t suffered as a result. It was incredible, and he wanted to stay in this moment forever, with Belle’s tongue stroking his and her nose bumping against his and…

He broke away to breathe and took in Belle’s bright eyes.

“Maybe not right now,” he said. “If you thought I was bad the first time, I don’t think that jetlag’s going to help.”

Belle rolled her eyes. “You’re not bad,” she said. “You’re just a little bit out of practice.”

Something told Joseph that he was going to be getting a lot more practice in the near future, and he was very much looking forward to it.

“Although you’re right that we probably shouldn’t do it now; Gold is expecting us over for dinner after all and I wouldn’t want us to get carried away. We should probably get going. He really is a great cook; I’ve very much enjoyed discovering his culinary talents recently. I still maintain that I make the best desserts though.”

Joseph followed her through the town towards Gold’s house. He would not be able to bring any skill in the kitchen, but he liked to think that there were other talents he had that would be useful to their relationship. It was Belle who gave him the confidence to think that they might stand a chance and that this could really work.

Gold was pottering about the kitchen when they entered the house, and they all sat down around the table to wait for the food to be ready. It was the first time that they had all sat down, all three of them, in a domestic atmosphere with nothing to worry about. There were no huge conversations to be had, none of them were half-high on pain medication, there was no darkness creeping in over their shoulders. It was just the three of them enjoying each other’s company, just the way that it should be.

“I love you,” Belle said. “I love you both, so much, and I know that things are only going to get better.”

Joseph and Gold both echoed her sentiments.

The darkness was gone, and the only way forward was into the light.


	52. Chapter 52

Sitting in the shade of a large cherry tree in Ella and Ursula’s garden, the breeze playing across her face, Belle smiled as she realised what day it was. 

Five years ago today she had first encountered Gold in the  _Spinning Wheel_  on the outskirts of Storybrooke, and their journey together had begun. So much had happened since then, and it was hard to believe that most of it had happened within the first few months after their meeting. In that time she’d met Gold, she’d met Joseph, they’d banished the entity and secured their future together.

The intervening four and a half years became a long blur of happiness in comparison. 

True, things hadn’t been plain sailing for them. Storybrooke was a small town founded on conservative values and they’d always found Belle and Gold to be oddities even before Joseph had moved to the town and their polyamorous relationship became apparent. They’d had to deal with more than their fair share of strange looks and whispers behind people’s hands.

In the end, they had made the move to Boston to be closer to their true friends, wanting to start a new life of living together in a new place. Considering that the only reason Gold had gone to Storybrooke in the first place was to find an out of the way place in which to wallow in misery, and the only reason that Belle had gone was because Gold was there, although she hadn’t realised that at the time, it wasn’t a heartbreaking decision to make.

Ella and Ursula had been wonderful in helping them set up their new life in return for being let in on exactly what had happened with the entity. Ella had been very good about not prying any further into things when they had asked for her help before, but now that she knew everything had come to a satisfactory conclusion, she was desperate to know just what it had been that they had been working towards.

As far-fetched as the story was, both Ella and Ursula were more than ready to believe it, and telling the tale had been such a relief for all three of them. They were no longer the only ones who knew what had been going on, and they had others to turn to when the occasional nightmare would shock them into waking with the memory of all that had occurred.

Belle smiled, resting her hands on her belly. Now that they were beginning their next great adventure, it was even more crucial for them to have other friends that understood them and could be relied upon in a time of crisis, although the crisis wasn’t likely to be as frightening as the previous ones that they had faced.

“You do realise that she’s going to be spoiled rotten,” Ella observed, nodding towards Belle’s bump.

Belle laughed. “I know. I think that’s a given with three doting parents and two doting godmothers. I wouldn’t have it any other way, though.”

“You’re braver than I am, that’s for certain. I don’t think I could ever have a child of my own. They’re much easier when you know that you can give them back at the end of it.”

Belle just smiled. Her pregnancy hadn’t exactly been planned, but as soon as she had discovered it, she knew that it was what she wanted. She hadn’t held any trepidation when she’d told Gold and Joseph, and they were both just as pleased as she was, accompanying her to all her scans and appointments, both eager to become parents.

“I’m just happy that I have the chance to be a mum,” she said. “Before, I never thought I would have the chance, and after I learned more about the entity and how it passed down through the bloodlines, I knew that I didn’t want to burden my child with that. Now that it’s gone though, I can’t wait to have this baby.”

Ella gave her a knowing look. “I did tell you that your palms said you would have two children,” she said. “I was correct about all your other future predictions.”

“I think I’ll stick with just the one for now. And yes, before you ask, I am very sure that I’m not having twins.” She touched the small lump where her daughter’s foot was poking out. Not long to go now before she’d finally be welcoming her into the world.

“You know, I think the entity missed a trick,” Ella said conversationally, and Belle looked up at her sharply.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Well, the thing said itself that it wasn’t responsible for you and Gold getting together. You did that all by yourselves. All it had to do was wait around and bide its time and wait for you two to conceive, and boom. The bloodline’s rejoined. If it had had a little more patience, then who knows?”

Belle shuddered at the thought. “Ella, that is not the kind of thing you say to a woman who’s thirty-four weeks pregnant. I’m already scared enough as it is.”

“I know, I’m sorry. It was just a thought that occurred to me. I am incredibly glad that it’s not going to happen.” She looked back towards the house. “What on earth is keeping them?”

Ursula had seconded Joseph and Gold’s help in the kitchen, but so far lunch was showing no signs of appearing. Privately, Belle thought that Ursula was giving Belle and Ella some time alone together. She had yet to work up the courage to ask Ella for another reading, having put it off for so long, but now that the baby was almost here, she wanted to know her future. She hadn’t told Gold and Joseph about her plan. Gold she knew would just roll his eyes in good-natured despair and tell her that it was all a load of bollocks. Joseph was much more inclined to believe, but would probably be worrying about what was going to happen.

“Do you know whose she is?” Ella asked presently.

Belle shook her head. “No, there’s no real way of knowing for us. We might find out when we find out her blood type after she’s born, but that’s not definite. It doesn’t matter to us; we’re not going to do a paternity test. She has three parents, that’s all there is to it.”

It was a decision that they had come to quickly once they found out that their family would be expanding. This baby was a part of all of them, no matter what her biological parentage was.

“Ella…” Belle began after a few minutes of silence. “I was wondering… Would you do another reading for me? I’ve been meaning to ask for a long time, but it never seemed like the right time.”

Ella smiled. “Of course. I’ve been waiting for you to ask.” She held out her hand for Belle’s left one, and she traced over the faint scar from the blade that crossed the centre of her palm. “I know what you want to find out,” she said. “Ever since you told me the tale of the entity and I put two and two together about your mirrored life line.”

Belle sighed. “Am I really that obvious?”

“No. Just call it intuition. But look here.” She touched the scar again. “This scar cuts across where the life line was. It’s no longer there. The scar misses your actual life line and your heart line, but intersects where the other life line was.”

Belle laughed. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that was fate.”

“I do know better and I am saying it’s fate.” Ella gave Belle her hand back. “Would you like me to get my cards?”

Belle shook her head.

“No, it was the life line that I was worried about. I think that I’m going to make my own future from now on.”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

“All right,” Ursula called from the French windows as she came out into the garden with Joseph and Gold behind them, all laden with dishes of food. “Lunch is served, and all talk of the supernatural and future predictions is firmly off the table for the duration of the meal.”

Naturally, in the absence of supernatural discussion, the conversation turned to the next most interesting thing, which was, of course, the baby.

“Have you thought of a name yet?” Ursula asked.

“Not yet. Her middle name is going to be Colette, after my mother, but we haven’t decided on a first name yet.” Belle smiled at the memories of happy evenings spent with a baby name book, all three of them throwing out various suggestions that the others proceeded to immediately veto.

One that they kept coming back to was Victoria. After all, she was a symbol of their triumph over the entity that had threatened all of their futures; they had come through it all and made this child against all the odds.

“I still say that we’re going to need to see what she looks like before we give her a name,” Gold said. He was sitting beside Belle and she leaned into his side as the conversation continued, her mind wandering back five years to their first meeting. At the time, she would never have dreamed that she would be here, in love with this man and about to raise a child with him.

The conversation began to turn to other things, Joseph steering them away from the baby and onto Ella and Ursula’s lives, despite Ella’s protests that their lives were boring and she’d far rather keep talking about Belle, Gold and Joseph’s lives. Gold pressed a kiss to Belle’s temple.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

“All right. I could use a back rub, though.” She paused. “And a foot rub, coming to think of it.”

“Well, you are in the very luck position of having enough devoted pairs of hands to be able to have both at the same time should you wish it.”

Belle grinned. “I think I do wish it. Never let it be said that there aren’t several advantages to having two men around the house, especially when you’re pregnant. Although, are you sure that this isn’t just an excuse for you two to get me naked and slippery and have your wicked way with me?”

“There is that about it too, but I do believe that you would be quite happy with us getting you naked and slippery and would very much being having your wicked way with us, rather than the other way around.”

“Only if you got naked and slippery too.”

“I think that could be arranged.”

“I heard the words ‘naked and slippery’ and I’m not sure whether or not to be nervous,” Joseph said. Belle just laughed. Joseph’s confidence had come on in leaps and bounds since the first time that they had been together in a threesome, and Belle whole-heartedly looked forward to the nights when they all ended up in the same bed, even if nothing heated came of it. It reminded her of the first time they’d all shared by necessity, back in New York on the mission to find the blade. It was the first moment when she had thought that a relationship with both of them might be a possibility, and the first time that she had let herself contemplate the future that had now become a reality, but that had seemed so very far away at the time.

Lunch was finished and the afternoon drew on, and Belle could feel herself tiring. The back rub and foot rub that she could get at home was becoming ever more inviting, and at last they took their leave of Ella and Ursula.

On her way back from the bathroom towards the front door and an end to their visit, Belle saw that Ella’s tarot cards were stacked innocently on an end table, and they had not been there before. Even though she had said that she was going to make her own future, she knew that Ella had left them there to tempt her on purpose. It couldn’t hurt to look, after all. Gold had never set any store by them, and she could always subscribe to his worldview for while if she didn’t like what she saw. Surreptitiously, she split the deck.

“The World.”

Belle looked up guiltily to see Ella smiling at her.

“I knew you might want to have a peek,” she said. “The World represents a pause in the circle of life,” she said. “It’s the last card in the major arcana before you return to the Fool who begins his or her journey again. It’s a moment in which to breathe before the next circle of life begins.”

Belle’s hands came back to rest on her pregnant belly. These next six or so weeks would be her pause, the final few moments before her life changed irrevocably with the arrival of her daughter.

“Enjoy your pause,” Ella said, giving her a hug.

As she left the house and met up with Gold and Joseph again, taking their hands as they walked back towards the car, Belle knew that she was definitely going to enjoy her pause, just as much as she was going to enjoy the new circle of life that was about to begin, one that would never be marred by the darkness within.


End file.
